ifWftfe 


DEC  29  1921 


BR    121     .K335 

Kelman,    John,     1864-1929. 

The    foundations    of    faith 


The  Foundations  of  Faith 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

A  New  Mind  For  the  New  Age  -  ( 1920  ) 

By  Henry  Churchill  King,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

The  Productive  Beliefs  -     -     -     -  ( 1919 ) 

By  Lynn  H.  Hough,  D.D. 

Old  Truths  and  New  Facts     -    -  ( 1918 ) 

By  Charles  E.  Jefferson,  D.D. 

The  North  American  Idea  -    -     -  ( 1917 ) 

By  James  A.  Macdonald,  LL.  D. 

The    Foundation   of    Modern 
Religion -    -  {1916) 

By  Herbert  B.  Workman,  D.  D. 

Winning  the  World  for  Christ   -  ( 1913 ) 

By  Bishop  Walter  R.  Lambuth. 

Personal  Christianity     ...    -  (1914) 

By  Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell. 

The  God  We  Trust  -----( igj3 ) 

By  G.  A.  Johnston  Ross. 

What  Does  Christianity  Mean  ?  -  ( 19/2 ) 

By  W.  H.  P.  Faunce. 

Some  Great  Leaders  in  the 

World  Movement     -----  (19/1) 

By  Robert  E.  Speer. 

In  the  School  of  Christ  -    -    -        ( igw  > 

By  Bishop  William  Fraser  McDowell. 

Jesus  the  Worker (1909) 

By  Charles  McTyeire  Bishop,  D.  D. 

The  Fact  of  Conversion    -    -    -  ( 1908 ) 

By  George  Jackson,  B.  A. 

God's  Message  to  the  Human  Soul  ( 1907 ) 

By  John   Watson   (Ian  Maclaren). 

Christ  and  Science    -----( igo6 ) 

By  Francis  Henry  Smith. 

The   Universal   Elements  of  the 
Christian  Religion     -----  (/goj) 

By  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall. 

The  Religion  of  the  Incarnation  -  ( 1903 ) 

By  Bishop  Eugene  Russell  Hendrix. 


/ 

The    Cole  Lectures  for  ig2l 

delivered  before  Vanderbilt  University 


■ »' 


The  Foundations 
of  Faith 


By 
JOHN  KELMAN,  D.  D., 

Pastor,  Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church9 
New  York 


New  York  Chicago 

Fleming     H.     Revell     Company 
London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      75    Princes    Street 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

THE  late  Colonel  E.  W.  Cole  of  Nashville,  Ten- 
nessee,  donated  to  Vanderbilt  University  the  sum 
of  five  thousand  dollars,  afterwards  increased  by 
Mrs.  E.  W.  Cole  to  ten  thousand,  the  design  and  con- 
ditions of  which  gift  are  stated  as  follows  : 

"  The  object  of  this  fund  is  to  establish  a  foundation 
for  a  perpetual  Lectureship  in  connection  with  the 
School  of  Religion  of  the  University,  to  be  restricted  in 
its  scope  to  a  defense  and  advocacy  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. The  lectures  shall  be  delivered  at  such  inter- 
vals, from  time  to  time,  as  shall  be  deemed  best  by  the 
Board  of  Trust ;  and  the  particular  theme  and  lecturer 
will  be  determined  by  the  Theological  Faculty.  Said 
lecture  shall  always  be  reduced  to  writing  in  full,  and 
the  manuscript  of  the  same  shall  be  the  property  of 
the  University,  to  be  published  or  disposed  of  by  the 
Board  of  Trust  at  its  discretion,  the  net  proceeds  arising 
therefrom  to  be  added  to  the  foundation  fund,  or 
otherwise  used  for  the  benefit  of  the  School  of  Re- 
ligion." 


Preface 

MANY  volumes  have  been  written 
upon  the  subject  of  these  lectures, 
and  it  would  be  a  very  pleasant  task 
and  by  no  means  a  difficult  one  to  gather  to- 
gether and  sum  up  opinions  old  and  new  upon 
their  main  thesis,  the  relation  between  faith 
and  authority.  The  present  volume,  however, 
does  not  offer  this  to  its  readers.  It  brings 
with  it  a  few  old  problems  under  whatever  new 
light  may  come  from  the  experience  of  a  long 
ministry.  For  thirty  years  the  writer  has  been 
watching  the  play  of  religious  truth  upon  the 
minds  of  men,  and  his  reading  of  theological 
results  has  been  revised  in  the  light  of  innumer- 
able experiences.  In  this  way  he  trusts  that 
he  may  be  able  to  present  formal  questions  at 
least  from  some  new  angles  of  vision  and  in 
some  new  groupings. 

Above  everything  else,  this  is  a  book  of  rec- 
onciliations. In  one  sense  controversy  for- 
wards the  progress  of  thought,  but  no  one  who 
has  watched  the  history  of  recent  religious  de- 
velopments can  question  the  extraordinary 
wastage  and  delay  which  have  been  occasioned 

7 


8  PREFACE 

by  unnecessary  controversies.  Of  recent  years 
theological  discussions  have  hindered  progress 
and  discovery  by  distracting  the  attention  of 
scholars  and  occupying  the  minds  of  the  un- 
scholarly  with  many  subjects  which  are  of 
comparatively  little  importance,  and  which 
might  have  been  settled  either  one  way  or  an- 
other without  affecting  in  the  slightest  degree 
any  religious  truth.  One  may  go  further  and 
say  that  to  a  large  extent  it  is  even  true  that 
apparently  opposite  schools  mean  precisely  the 
same  thing.  It  is  altogether  amazing  how 
much  of  our  divergence  is  simply  a  matter  of 
expression,  and  how  little  essential  difference 
there  is  between  earnest  men  concerning  the 
deepest  truths.  These  lectures  are  an  attempt 
to  get  below  the  surface  of  controversy  to  the 
common  facts  of  religious  experience  on  which 
all  Christian  men  may  meet  and  hold  com- 
munion. 


Contents 

LECTURE  I 
The  Foundations  of  Faith      .        „        •      1 1 

LECTURE  II 

The  Basis  of  Authority  .        .        .        .41 

LECTURE  III 

The  Character  of  God    ...        s      75 

LECTURE  IV 

The  Incarnate  Love        .        .        .        .111 

LECTURE  V 

Means  and  Ends 147 

LECTURE  VI 

Where  the  Faiths  of  Men  Meet    .        .    175 


LECTURE  I 
THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 


LECTURE  I 
THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

For  He  hath  founded  it  upon  the  seas,  and  es- 
tablished it  upon  the  floods. — Psalm  24 :  2. 

THESE  words  are  traditionally  asso- 
ciated with  the  story  of  the  bringing 
of  the  ark  to  Zion,  and  the  establish- 
ment of  the  throne  of  David  in  the  conquered 
Jebusite  city  of  Jerusalem.  It  is  peculiarly  in- 
teresting that  Israel's  creative  idea  should  be 
introduced  in  this  fashion  on  such  an  occasion. 
The  object  appears  to  have  been  to  exhibit  the 
theocracy  as  the  great  end  and  aim  of  creation, 
and  thus  to  exalt  alike  the  throne  of  David  and 
the  God  of  Israel. 

Yet  it  is  not  in  connection  with  that  great 
historic  conception  that  the  text  has  forced 
itself  upon  the  beginning  of  these  lectures.  I 
have  found  no  other  expression  of  the  thing  I 
want  to  say  so  picturesque  and  arresting  as 
that  which  is  given  in  these  words.  The 
Psalmist,  in  his  search  for  the  foundations  of 
the  Kingdom  of  Israel,  has  gone  back  to  those 
conceptions  which  are  so  charmingly  described 
in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis.     In  that  chap- 

13 


14  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

ter  we  see  God  entering  upon  the  chaos  and 
the  watery  abyss  of  the  beginning  for  the  pur- 
pose of  distinctions.  He  separates  the  light 
from  the  darkness,  the  heaven  from  the  earth, 
and  the  dry  land  from  the  sea. 

The  earth,  as  the  Hebrews  thought  of  it, 
floats  like  a  disc  upon  the  surface  of  the  seas, 
after  the  manner  of  an  iceberg.  "  The  Great 
Deep  "  is  literally  the  waters  which  are  under 
the  earth.  To  the  Greek  imagination  the  ocean 
was  a  river  flowing  round  about  the  world, 
and  in  certain  ancient  maps  this  river  is  thus 
depicted;  but  the  Hebrew  conceived  of  it  as  a 
vast  lake,  not  only  around  the  disc  of  earth, 
but  actually  underneath  it.  As  for  the  disc 
itself,  in  the  submerged  part  of  it  there  is 
located  the  great  hollow  of  Sheol.  This  is  an 
immense  cave,  the  abode  of  the  spirits  of  the 
dead.  Above  Sheol,  on  the  surface  of  the  disc, 
is  the  world  we  know,  with  man  living  his  life 
upon  it.  Beneath  all  lies  the  Great  Deep, 
whose  waters  are  laid  up  there  in  the  huge 
storehouses  referred  to  in  the  thirty-third 
psalm.  Into  this  bottomless  Deep  the  roots  of 
the  mountains  pierce  down  like  anchors,  hold- 
ing the  earth  stable.  It  is  to  this  region  that 
the  song  of  Jonah  refers  when  the  prophet 
says,  /  went  dozvn  to  the  bottom  of  the  moun- 
tains, the  earth  with  her  bars  closed  upon  me 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  1 5 

forever.  It  is  interesting  to  glance  over  the 
older  commentaries  upon  this  passage.  De- 
litsch  remarks  that  the  earth  has  waters  for 
basis  and  would  sink  down  into  them  but  for 
God's  supporting  power.  Matthew  Henry  in 
a  very  characteristic  passage  writes,  "A  weak 
and  unstable  foundation  (one  would  think)  to 
build  the  earth  upon;  and  yet,  if  the  Almighty 
power  please,  it  shall  serve  to  bear  the  weight 
of  the  earth.  The  waters,  which  at  first  cov- 
ered it,  were  ordered  under  it,  that  dry  land 
might  appear,  and  so  they  are  as  a  foundation 
to  it." 

There  was  much  in  the  geography  of  Pales- 
tine to  confirm  such  a  theory  as  this.  All  deep 
wells  and  springs  (and  there  are  many  of  them 
in  Palestine  and  the  neighbouring  country) 
suggested  a  passage  connecting  down  to  the 
Deep.  Also  in  certain  places,  like  the  Springs 
of  the  Jordan,  you  have  full-bodied  rivers,  or 
at  least  considerable  streams,  suddenly  emerg- 
ing from  the  earth  at  some  cave  in  a  moun- 
tainside, or  even  bubbling  up  from  beneath  in 
pools  that  lie  in  the  plains.  Most  significant 
and  striking  of  all  are  those  underground  wa- 
ters of  the  Negeb,  or  south  country,  which  are 
heard  but  never  seen.  The  traveller,  putting 
his  ear  to  a  crack  in  the  ground  in  these 
regions,  may  so  constantly  hear  the  sound  of 


16  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

running  waters  far  beneath,  as  to  receive  the 
impression  that  he  is  walking  dry-shod  above  a 
vast  network  of  river  courses  in  the  heart  of 
the  earth.  It  is  no  wonder  if  the  Hebrews 
held  this  mysterious  Deep  in  great  horror, 
calling  it  by  strange  names  such  as  Dragon, 
Serpent,  Rahab  and  Leviathan.  They  were 
land-dwellers  who  had  no  hereditary  experi- 
ence of  the  sea,  and  who  associated  with  the 
conception  of  great  waters  all  that  was  mys- 
terious, remote  from  life,  and  horrible. 

One  thing  especially  is  to  be  remembered 
about  this  curious  cosmogony.  It  affords  a 
good  sample  of  the  way  in  which  scientific 
ideas  arose  in  primitive  times.  They  were  not 
speculations  based  upon  material  facts  and 
geological  studies,  but  the  reflections  of  the 
mental  and  spiritual  moods  of  those  who 
adopted  them.  It  was  the  inner  world  that 
gave  its  form  to  the  outer,  and  not  the  outer 
to  the  inner.  All  primitive  physical  science  is 
really  constructed  upon  the  model  of  man's 
thoughts  and  feelings  about  life.  When  an 
ancient  man  writes,  He  hangeth  the  earth  upon 
nothing,  we  have  an  excellent  expression  of  his 
sense  of  precariousness  and  insecurity.  In 
many  difficult  times  that  is  precisely  how  life 
feels — hung  upon  nothing,  and  in  momentary 
danger  of  falling  away  into  the  abyss.     So 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  1 7 

here,  a  man  who  feels  the  instability  and  un- 
certainty of  his  hold  upon  the  life  of  the  spirit, 
may  very  naturally  transfer  these  sentiments  to 
the  science  which  he  is  constructing. 

And  yet  this  earth,  so  precariously  hung,  is 
firm  enough  for  man's  uses.  He  can  dwell 
upon  it  in  safety,  and  walk  to  and  fro  upon  his 
various  business  on  its  platform,  and  looking 
up  from  thence  he  can  see  the  sun  and  moon 
and  stars.  This  is  indeed  a  sufficiently  exact 
statement  of  our  spiritual  situation.  In  every 
way  the  life  of  man  is  still  felt  to  be  a  thing 
of  unstable  equilibrium,  insecure  in  the  last  de- 
gree, yet  it  may  be  lived  steadily  and  with  con- 
fidence. We  swing  forever  over  tremendous 
mysteries,  and  yet  we  can  live  our  ordinary 
lives  upon  the  platform  on  which  we  swing; 
and,  looking  up,  we  also  may  see  the  heavens 
and  all  their  splendours.  Thus  the  ancient 
cosmogony  is  a  kind  of  metaphor  for  our 
spiritual  life.  It  expresses  the  feel  of  life  in 
a  manner  which  most  of  us  recognize  and  wel- 
come. The  literal  truth  of  it  is  within  the 
spirit  of  man,  and  every  generation  knows  it. 
The  resultant  ancient  view  of  the  world  and  of 
the  Great  Deep  is  perhaps  the  finest  figurative 
expression  of  a  spiritual  truth  that  ever  has 
been  or  could  be  found. 

As  for  the  general  truth  which  this  concep- 


1 8  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

tion  illustrates,  I  should  like  to  view  it  in  three 
different  applications  in  reference  to  our  mod- 
ern life  and  thought. 

1.  Natural  science.  One  of  the  most  in- 
teresting facts  in  the  thought  of  the  past  half 
century  has  been  the  passing  of  that  type  of 
crude  materialism  which  was  associated  with 
the  name  of  Haeckel.  The  popularity  of  his 
volume  entitled  The  Riddle  of  the  Universe, 
and  the  influence  which  it  exerted  upon  the 
mind  of  its  time,  is  now  a  rather  puzzling 
memory  in  the  story  of  intellectual  develop- 
ment. Apart  altogether  from  Christianity, 
natural  science  swung  back  past  Haeckel's  po- 
sition and  incorporated  more  and  more  of 
spiritual  data,  either  as  ascertained  fact  or  at 
least  possibility.  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  in  his 
earlier  days  insisted  upon  the  scientific  possi- 
bility of  a  communion  with  the  spiritual  world 
through  prayer,  and  still  earlier  Professor 
George  John  Romanes,  in  his  posthumous  vol- 
ume entitled  Thoughts  and  Religion,  told  the 
story  of  his  soul,  and  in  intimate  personal 
notes  gave  one  of  the  most  striking  and  sig- 
nificant of  all  testimonies  to  the  reality  and 
power  of  spiritual  life.  These  great  thinkers 
had  an  enormous  influence  upon  the  mind  of 
their  time,  and  along  with  other  similar  testi- 
monies they  brought   it   about  that   the   or- 


THE  FOUNDATIONS   OF  FAITH  19 

dinary  man  felt  it  no  longer  unscientific 
to  be  a  believer  in  his  own  soul.  Yet 
from  every  such  period  of  thought  as  that 
of  the  earlier  materialism  there  linger 
memories  and  prejudices.  These  remain 
in  the  minds  of  future  generations  in  spite 
of  the  new  invasion  of  spiritual  hope  and 
faith.  They  remain,  not  so  much  in  the  form 
of  definitely  stated  and  argued  opinions,  as  of 
a  pervading  spirit  of  doubt  and  hesitation 
which  tends  to  check  men's  advance  in  faith, 
and  to  dull  the  edge  of  their  confidence.  One 
such  prejudice  lingers  even  yet  in  regard  to  the 
grounds  of  our  Christian  faith  as  contrasted 
with  those  of  science.  It  is  supposed  by  many, 
who  cannot  or  will  not  take  the  pains  to  ex- 
amine the  supposition,  that  while  science  builds 
its  structure  of  opinion  upon  known  and 
proved  facts,  no  such  claim  can  be  made  for 
religion. 

It  is  this  prejudice  which  gives  permanent 
significance  to  Mr.  Arthur  J.  Balfour's  book, 
The  Foundations  of  Belief.  The  first  part  of 
that  fascinating  volume  is  entirely  occupied 
with  carrying  the  war  into  the  enemy's  camp. 
It  is  one  long  tn  qnoqiie,  in  which  the  author 
asserts  and  seeks  to  prove  that,  in  respect  of 
ultimate  foundations,  natural  science  is  in  no 
better  case  than  religion.     Materialistic  scien- 


20  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

tists  had  supposed  that  their  foundations  were 
secure  down  to  the  very  bottom  of  things,  and 
that  believers  in  spiritual  realities  had  no  such 
foundations  whatever.  Upon  examination  it 
appears  that  no  claim  could  be  less  valid  than 
this.  People  speak  about  matter  itself  as  if 
they  knew  all  about  it,  but  when  we  try  to  de- 
fine it  our  attempt  is  astonishingly  instructive. 
As  one  goes  back  through  the  many  successive 
theories  which  have  arisen  and  passed  within 
a  lifetime,  the  claim  of  ultimate  foundations 
very  soon  vanishes.  The  atoms  have  jour- 
neyed through  a  longer  course  than  the  Israel- 
ites, and  have  encountered  more  adventures 
than  Ulysses,  without  reaching  any  promised 
land  of  definition.  Even  to-day  they  elude  all 
search;  and  indeed  Bishop  Berkeley,  who  de- 
nied the  reality  of  matter  altogether,  has  never 
yet  been  finally  and  convincingly  answered. 
Force  is  notoriously  in  no  better  case. 

Even  motion  very  soon  lands  us  in  amazing 
perplexities.  One  remembers  the  ancient 
puzzle  of  the  Greek  sophists,  that  a  thing  can- 
not move  where  it  is,  because  then  it  would 
cease  to  be  where  it  is,  and  on  the  other  hand 
it  cannot  move  where  it  is  not,  because  it  can- 
not be  where  it  is  not.  Electricity  is  known 
simply  so  far  as  the  utilizing  of  it  for  practical 
purposes;  but  no  one  knows  what  it  is  in  itself; 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  21 

and,  for  lack  of  understanding,  the  phrase 
"  the  electric  fluid  "  has  long  been  found  useful 
to  cover  popular  ignorance.  Until  recently, 
the  law  of  gravitation  was  considered  as  a 
thing  thoroughly  understood,  probed  to  the 
bottom,  and  established  forever;  but  Einstein 
suddenly  arose  and  relegated  gravitation  to  the 
same  category  of  insoluble  mystery  as  the  rest. 
We  can  utilize  all  these  things  but  we  cannot 
know  them,  and  we  seem  to  be  no  nearer  the 
knowledge  of  their  ultimate  nature  than  our 
fathers  were. 

The  problem  of  life  is  in  no  better  case. 
Biology  has  given  us  wonderful  accounts  of  the 
facts  as  they  present  themselves  to  the  observer, 
and  physiology  has  disclosed  the  marvels  of 
mechanism  which  lie  behind  all  these  phe- 
nomena; but  science,  when  a  definition  of  the 
ultimate  meaning  of  the  fact  of  life  is  de- 
manded of  it,  is  no  nearer  a  solution  to-day 
than  it  was  of  old.  Indeed  Herbert  Spencer's 
word  remains  still  as  good  as  any  that  has 
been  spoken,  defining  life  merely  as  the  sum  of 
the  forces  that  can  resist  death.  By  all  these 
ways  we  arrive  at  the  same  result,  and  men  of 
letters  and  of  science  confirm  it  in  memorable 
words.  Lecky  has  gone  near  the  heart  of 
things  when  he  tells  us  that  "  The  discovery  of 
law  is  not  an  adequate  solution  of  the  problem 


22  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

of  causes. "  Hugh  Benson  has  translated  the 
scientific  confession  into  popular  form  when  he 
says  that  "  the  real  searchers  after  truth  know 
that  the  further  one  goes  in  one's  inquiries,  it 
only  means  that  one  gets  nearer  the  heart  of 
some  insoluble  mystery;  and  that  the  highest 
possible  outcome  of  human  knowledge,  in  any 
line  almost,  consists  in  this — that  one  can  state 
with  something  like  correctness,  not  the  key  to 
the  mystery,  the  answer  to  the  riddle,  but  the 
riddle  itself.  Professor  J.  Arthur  Thompson 
sums  up  the  whole  matter  in  one  memorable 
sentence :  "  Each  new  discovery  only  shows  us 
a  wider  circle  of  our  surrounding  ignorance." 

Yet,  in  spite  of  all  this  question  about  foun- 
dations, science  is  perfectly  secure,  and  its  con- 
clusions are  trustworthy.  Our  knowledge 
cannot  indeed  begin  at  the  bottom  of  any- 
thing: but,  beginning  where  our  experience 
of  the  thing  begins,  we  can  build  up  a  satis- 
factory system  of  real  knowledge  which  can  be 
put  to  practical  uses,  not  merely  in  the  labora- 
tory of  the  scientist  but  in  the  factory  and  in 
the  home. 

2.  Our  knozvledge  of  ourselves  and  of  each 
other.  This,  like  the  former,  is  an  ancient 
puzzle,  and  it  cannot  be  said  that  we  are  very 
much  nearer  a  solution  of  it  now  than  in  for- 
mer days.     It  is  pathetic  to  read,  across  well- 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  23 

nigh   four  centuries,  the  lines  of  Sir  John 
Davies: 

"  Musicians  think  our  souls  are  harmonies, 
Physicians  think  that  they  complexions  be, 
Epicures  make  them  swarms  of  atomies 
Which  do  by  chance  into  our  bodies  flee. 

"  Some  think  one  gen'ral  soul  fills  every  brain 
As  the  great  sun  sheds  light  in  every  star, 
And  others  think  the  name  of  soul  is  vain 
And  that  we  only  well-mixed  bodies  are. 

"  Thus  these  great  clerks  their  little  wisdom  show 
While  with  their  doctrines  they  at  hazard  play, 
Passing  their  light  opinions  to  and  fro 
To  mock  the  lewd — as  learn'd  in  this  as  they." 

In  connection  with  the  inquiry  into  the  na- 
ture of  man's  spirit,  all  sorts  of  questions  arise 
on  every  side,  regarding  the  connection  of 
mind  with  matter,  the  dependence  of  thought 
upon  brain,  and  the  identification  or  correlation 
of  the  two.1  It  may  be  said  without  much  fear 
of  contradiction  that  in  this  field  also,  though 
much  has  been  written,  nothing  or  next  to 
nothing  is  known.  Similarly  the  old  contro- 
versy between  free-will  and  necessity  has  had 
enough  written  upon  it  to  upset  the  balance  of 

3  Cf.  James*  Human  Immortality  with  its  illuminating 
words  concerning  the  three-fold  possibility  of  this  con- 
nection— creative,  releasing,  or  expressive. 


24  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

the  world,  as  it  has  upset  the  balance  of  a  good 
many  of  its  inhabitants.  Yet  each  generation 
is  puzzled  again,  and  it  is  pathetic  to  see  a  new 
crop  of  fresh  spirits  advancing  each  year  to  the 
trodden  battlefields  and  adopting  the  ancient 
cries.  The  very  existence  of  any  other  person 
besides  oneself  comes  into  this  category.  If 
you  meet  with  a  lunatic  who  denies  that  other 
people  exist,  and  considers  that  everybody  else 
is  but  a  shadow  while  he  is  the  only  reality,  I 
shall  defy  you  to  prove  him  wrong  by  a  logical 
argument  which  will  be  thoroughly  satisfactory 
either  to  him  or  to  yourself.  You  may  in- 
deed say  to  him  that  it  is  simply  a  matter  of 
votes,  that  the  vast  majority  of  people  think 
in  this  way  and  so  one  must  believe  it:  but  it 
will  hardly  be  possible  for  you  not  to  remem- 
ber that  the  vast  majority  of  people  have  on 
many  occasions  been  wr©ng,  while  the  one  ap- 
parent lunatic  has  been  proved  right.  Luna- 
tics in  general  are  desperately  difficult  people 
to  argue  with,  not  because  they  are  unreason- 
able, but  because  they  are  so  terribly  reasonable 
along  one  line ;  and  much  intercourse  with  them 
leads  to  frequent  humiliation. 

Thus,  so  far  as  absolutely  proved  knowl- 
edge goes,  we  must  all  confess  ourselves  com- 
pletely ignorant  upon  many  matters  which  are 
commonly  taken  for  granted,  and  on  which  we 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  25 

act  in  the  practical  sphere  every  day.  The 
only  answer  that  we  can  give  to  any  one  who 
objects  to  this  is  just  that  by  the  very  constitu- 
tion of  our  human  nature  we  must  take  the 
risk.  We  find  ourselves  here  under  the  stern 
necessity  of  living,  and  in  order  to  live  we 
must  rest  and  act  upon  certain  fundamental 
convictions,  without  which  human  life  would 
be  impossible.  Further,  if  we  take  this  course, 
we  soon  find  that  life  works  back  to  knowl- 
edge. By  taking  certain  fundamental  things 
for  granted,  we  attain  to  a  practical  knowl- 
edge of  their  reality,  which  cannot  be  always 
defended  by  abstract  reasoning,  but  which  is 
none  the  less  true  knowledge.  Among  other 
such  convictions  we  attain  to  that  of  one  an- 
other's existence,  a  conviction  which  satisfies 
all  the  real  necessities  of  thought,  although  it 
may  satisfy  little  or  nothing  of  its  curiosity. 

3.     Faith  is  equally,  but  not  in  any  greater 
degree,  founded  upon  insoluble  mysteries. 

"  Oh,  I  would  like  to  ken — to  the  beggar-wife 
says  I 
The  reason  o*  the  cause  an*  the  wherefore  o* 

the  why, 
Wi'  mony  anither  riddle  brings  the  tear  into 

my  e'e. 
'  It's  gey  an*  easy  spierin','  says  the  beggar-wife 
to  me." 


26  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

If  some  one  challenges  our  belief  in  the  ex- 
istence of  God,  asserting  that  this  is  but  the 
relic  of  a  childish  fancy,  or  that  it  had  its 
origins  in  primitive  fear,  we  may  point  out  that 
we  have  dropped  other  childish  beliefs,  while 
we  feel  constrained  to  retain  this  one  on  other 
grounds.  We  may  admit  that  primitive  fears 
have  intensified  man's  conviction  of  God,  but 
may  still  maintain  that  they  do  not  create  it. 
In  such  ways  we  shall  be  led  into  long  contro- 
versy which  may  occupy  many  volumes.  But 
in  all  such  controversies,  through  which  men 
have  sought  to  establish  belief  in  God  by  argu- 
ment, it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  main  stress  is 
laid  upon  origins,  and  the  center  of  debate  al- 
ways ranges  around  these.  It  is  an  endless 
warfare,  and  in  the  great  majority  of  minds  it 
leads  to  no  particular  result.  But  there  comes 
a  time  when  the  believer  discovers  that  he  is 
not  really  interested  in  the  origins  of  beliefs, 
but  in  the  actual  beliefs  as  he  holds  them — 
facts  of  his  own  religious  experience.  Just  as 
in  former  cases,  so  here.  You  may  utilize 
these  facts  although  you  cannot  understand 
them ;  and  in  the  end  you  will  discover  that  if 
any  progress  is  to  be  made,  the  only  course  is 
to  leave  the  questions  of  origins  alone  in  the 
meantime,  since  we  cannot  now  go  back  to 
them  with  any  certainty  or  clearness  of  vision. 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  2^ 

The  facts  must  be  attacked  at  the  present  cross- 
section  of  our  actual  human  experience.  We 
have  to  work  out  all  such  questions  in  terms  of 
religious  values,  and  ask,  What  part  does  God 
play  in  my  life  as  I  know  it  now?  Can  I  or 
can  I  not  meet  Him  within  the  workings  of  my 
soul  and  discover  Him  in  the  revelations  and 
interpretations  of  life  which  my  own  soul  pro- 
vides ? 

The  same  thing  holds  true  in  regard  to  im- 
mortality and  the  life  beyond  death.  After 
many  centuries  of  argument  it  must  be  frankly 
confessed  that  nothing  has  emerged  from  ab- 
stract argument  which  is  absolutely  convincing 
to  the  intellect.  The  stock  argument  from  the 
analogy  of  nature,  the  hints  supposed  to  be 
given  in  consciousness  concerning  a  previous 
existence,  the  classical  arguments  from  the  na- 
ture of  the  soul,  are  confessedly  insecure  and 
disappointing.  From  the  poetic  point  of  view 
they  are  interesting  and  beautiful,  but  to  many 
minds  they  lack  compelling  power.  It  is  a 
very  striking  fact  that  when  Robert  Browning 
sought  to  argue  out  this  question  he  was  able 
only  to  reach  the  dim  probabilities  of  La 
Saisiaz: 

"  So  I  hope — no  more  than  hope,  but  hope — no 
less  than  hope." 


28  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

But,  both  in  earlier  and  in  later  times,  he 
reached  the  certainty  of  Prospice  and  of  the 
Epilogue  to  Asolando  by  employing  other 
methods.  Our  own  experience  of  love,  reveal- 
ing God  within  the  soul,  may  give  to  us  the 
Psalmist's  ancient  conviction  that  a  soul  once 
loved  cannot  be  lost,  and  that  He  who  has  re- 
vealed Himself  to  us  as  Lover  of  the  soul  will 
certainly  not  leave  it  to  death.1  The  upshot 
of  the  whole  matter  is  this,  that  so  long  as  you 
face  such  problems  on  the  ground  of  mere  in- 
tellectual debate,  it  will  be  found  that  there  is 
always  some  possible  way  of  arguing  against 
evidence.  You  will  never  reach  by  logic  that 
firmness  and  permanence  of  conviction  which 
may  be  derived  from  the  simple  act  by  which  * 
the  soul  faces,  interprets,  and  trusts  its  own  ex- 
perience. 

The  acutest  point  for  the  preacher  is  his  pre- 
sentation of  the  central  fact  of  Christian  faith, 
the  cross  of  Christ.  Much  has  been  written 
about  the  atonement  and  many  theories  pro- 
pounded, but  it  must  be  confessed  that  the  re- 
sults have  been  rather  disappointing.  After 
all  is  said  about  that  stupendous  dogma,  no 
man  who  has  thought  deeply  upon  it  can  pro- 
fess to  understand  it.  It  rests  upon  profound 
mysteries  which  at  the  present  time  are  wholly 
1  Psalm  16 :  10. 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  29 

insoluble.  Behind  it  there  is  the  long  line  of 
the  thoughts  of  ancient  men,  generations  and 
centuries  of  barbaric  sacrifice  and  the  guilt  and 
fear  which  inspire  it;  profound  convictions  as 
to  the  justice  of  God  and  the  love  of  God  in 
their  relations  to  one  another;  unfathomable 
mysteries  of  free-will  and  responsibility;  tragic 
facts  of  human  sin  and  the  curse  which  fol- 
lows upon  it.  Altogether  this  doctrine  is 
founded  upon  the  floods,  the  tossing  sea  of  the 
life  of  human  conscience  and  the  deeper  and 
more  tremendous  depths  of  the  divine  nature 
and  purpose.  And  yet,  although  it  rests  upon 
such  profound  and  unfathomable  mysteries,  it 
is  nevertheless  founded,  and  it  forms  a  firm 
and  stable  platform  for  man's  experience  of 
redemption.  It  is  secure  enough  for  all  that 
any  man's  soul  will  ever  need.  You  do  not  re- 
quire to  begin  at  the  foundations  of  the  uni- 
verse, nor  at  the  dawn  of  history,  nor  at  any 
metaphysical  theory  underlying  the  doctrine  of 
atonement.  You  may  begin  here,  at  the  one 
simple  question  as  to  what  religious  value  the 
cross  has  for  man,  and  what  it  can  do  for  his 
soul.  Doubtless  it  is  founded  upon  terrifying 
floods  of  moral  horror  which  register  their 
fullest  tide  at  Calvary,  and  upon  depths  of  the 
mystery  of  divine  operation  which  no  man  has 
ever  yet  comprehended.     But  for  us  it  means 


30  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

simply  the  love  of  God  manifest  in  Jesus 
Christ,  satisfying  all  the  unknown  require- 
ments of  our  tragic  and  distracted  case.  In 
our  acceptance  of  it  we  find  the  love  of  God 
flooding  our  soul,  beating  back  the  chase  of 
enemies,  making  us  over  again  in  a  new  man- 
hood, giving  to  the  outraged  conscience  a  per- 
manent peace,  and  to  the  sick  and  haunted  soul 
the  calm  joy  of  the  redeemed. 

Thus  it  appears  that  religious  faith,  like  the 
other  beliefs  which  we  have  mentioned,  seems 
to  rest  upon  nothing.  There  are  times  when 
the  anxious  believer  discovers  that  his  faith's 
foundations  have  apparently  vanished  and  are 
out  of  sight.  At  such  times  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  he  should  be  tempted  to  ask,  What  if 
it  be  not  true  after  all?  Nor  will  it  be  sur- 
prising if,  in  his  attempt  to  answer  that  ques- 
tion, he  should  discover  that  he  has  no  argu- 
ment by  which  he  may  effectually  silence 
doubt.  At  such  a  time  there  is  but  one  thing 
for  him  to  do.  He  must  fall  back  upon  his 
own  experience  and  find  in  that  a  sufficient 
ground  for  believing.  Whatever  floods  of 
mystery  the  doctrines  of  Christianity  are  ulti- 
mately founded  on,  here  in  actual  present  ex- 
perience there  is  solid  ground  beneath  them,  a 
sufficient  platform  for  faith  to  stand  upon. 
Religion  does  not  mean  that  we  profess  to 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  3* 

know  what  God  is  and  that  we  are  able  to  de- 
fine Him.  It  means  that  we  know  God  as  an 
actual  potent  factor  in  our  own  lives.  The 
late  Dr.  Dale  has  said  that  it  is  easy  to  believe 
in  God  so  long  as  one  is  not  asked  to  define 
Him,  and  there  is  a  far-reaching  truth  in  the 
words.  In  our  faith  we  have  to  begin  some- 
where, and  we  simply  cannot  get  to  the  ulti- 
mate roots  of  things  to  begin  there. 

But  the  real  seat  of  authority  is  not  in  the 
ultimate  roots  of  things  but  in  a  man's  own 
heart  and  life,  and  he  who  seeks  it  outside  of 
these  will  seek  in  vain.  This  experience- 
knowledge  will  satisfy  your  own  mind  and 
soul.  You  know  it,  although  you  do  not 
know  how  you  know  it.  You  will  observe 
that  others  find  it  in  the  main  to  be  the  same 
as  that  which  you  find,  so  that  it  will  verify 
itself  not  only  in  individual  dogmatic  cer- 
tainty, but  in  a  common  Christian  faith.  But 
the  main  point  for  each  man  is  not  what  others 
believe  but  what  he  himself  believes,  and  the 
main  ground  of  his  certainty  must  ultimately 
rest  in  the  processes  of  his  own  mind ' 

*  It  may  seem  to  some  that  this  is  unreasonable.  But 
there  is  a  clear  distinction  to  be  drawn  between  reason 
and  reasoning.  We  frankly  admit  that  such  certainties 
cannot  be  arrived  at  by  reasoning.  Yet  in  the  larger 
sense  they  may  be  given  in  reason.    Logic  is  not  the 


32  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

Thus,  from  the  purely  theoretical  point  of 
view,  faith  is,  and  always  must  be,  a  venture. 
Of  every  earnest  thinker  the  question  is  asked, 
How  much  intellectual  completeness  are  you 
prepared  to  risk,  or  even  to  sacrifice,  on  the 
chance  of  your  faith  proving  to  be  true  ?  The 
answer  is  that  the  venture  justifies  itself  by 
fitting  you  into  an  intelligible  universe.  This 
answer  is  made,  primarily,  on  the  ground  that 
your  own  individual  experience  will  back  and 
confirm  your  faith.  It  is  further  supported  by 
the  fact  that  many  thousands  of  the  noblest 
and  most  trustworthy  voices  tell  you  that  their 
faith  also  has  been  thus  confirmed.  Yet  in  this 
matter  the  all-important  question  concerns  our 
own  experience.  Christianity  always  goes  on 
the  principle  that  they  who  trust  shall  come  to 
know.  It  would  seem  that  life  likes  to  be 
trusted,  and  that  it  rewards  the  trustful.  Our 
argument  is  that  it  will  in  a  practical  manner 
convince  each  one  who  ventures  it,  although 
none  of  us  may  know  theoretically  how  that 
conviction  is  achieved. 

Of  course  there  always  will  be  some  who 

only  method  of  reason.  It  includes  much  that  cannot 
be  reduced  to  logical  formulae,  and,  as  Benjamin  Kidd 
has  excellently  expressed  it,  such  "  ultra-rational  sanc- 
tions" are  equally  valid  with  results  of  formal  rea- 
soning. 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  33 

demand  a  complete  proof,  and  who  insist  upon 
solving  the  whole  problem  of  the  universe 
before  they  will  consent  to  believe.  They  will 
have  all  or  nothing,  and  no  faith  will  satisfy 
them  which  cannot  trace  its  pedigree  back  to 
the  furthest  metaphysical  ancestry.  Our  reply 
to  such  must  be  that  we  are  only  asking  them 
to  do  in  their  religion  the  thing  which  they 
are  actually  doing — which  indeed  they  cannot 
help  doing — in  everything  else.  Your  whole 
world  of  conviction,  both  as  regards  science, 
and  even  as  regards  personal  existence  itself, 
is  founded  upon  the  floods.  Its  ultimate  defi- 
nitions are  lost  in  metaphysical  mystery.  If 
that  be  so,  it  is  wholly  unfair  to  deny  to  us 
the  right  to  do  m  our  Christian  faith  the  very 
identical  thing  which  you  are  doing  in  every 
other  region  of  belief.  If  it  be  a  matter  of 
absolute  proof,  you  have  no  right  to  believe  in 
your  own  personal  existence,  or  in  the  data 
of  elementary  natural  science.  We  claim  to 
hold  our  faith  on  precisely  the  same  terms. 

Dr.  Dale  in  one  of  his  books  gives  an  inter- 
esting incident  in  connection  with  a  certain 
chapel  which  had  a  peculiarly  noble  set  of 
pillars  on  which  the  heavy  weight  above  the 
pulpit  seemed  to  rest.  During  structural 
alterations  these  pillars  and  the  panelled  spaces 
between  them  had  to  be  cut  across.     Then,  to 


34  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

their  astonishment,  the  people  found  that  the 
pillars  were  actually  hanging  from  the  very 
structures  which  they  were  supposed  to  uphold. 
So,  in  the  last  analysis,  it  is  with  faith.  All 
human  faith  ultimately  rests  on  experience, 
either  direct  or  transmitted,  and  the  real 
strength  of  the  faith  is  measured  by  the 
directness  and  immediacy  of  its  connection 
with  the  believer's  own  experience.  Instead  of 
our  experience- faith  depending  on  its  meta- 
physical explanations,  the  fact  is  that  these 
explanations  depend  entirely  upon  it. 

All  this  is  by  no  means  so  strange  as  it 
seems.  In  these  days,  when  M.  Bergson  is 
telling  us  in  such  brilliant  fashion  that  knowl- 
edge is  for  life  and  not  life  for  knowledge,  we 
can  well  believe  that  there  must  be  within  our 
own  lives  some  vital  facts  which  are  creditable 
in  their  own  right.  All  that  concerns  us  most, 
either  for  time  or  for  eternity,  is  founded  in- 
tellectually upon  floods  of  insoluble  mystery. 
However  much  we  would  like  to  do  so,  there 
is  no  part  of  it  which  we  can  search  to  its 
foundations  and  prove  to  the  satisfaction  of 
abstract  reasoning.  Our  wisdom,  therefore, 
and  our  only  hope,  is  continually  to  turn  back 
from  gray  theory  to  the  brilliance  of  actual 
life,  to  cease  from  shouting  our  vain  questions 
down  into  the  bottomless  abyss,  to  lay  hold 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  35 

upon  life  itself  and  to  demand  that  it  shall  tell 
us  its  own  meaning. 

We  must  still  face  the  last  stand  of  doubt. 
Suppose  that  a  man  has  accepted  the  general 
point  of  view  which  this  lecture  has  sought  to 
express,  there  remains  one  final  difficulty. 
That  is  the  doubt  concerning  experience  itself, 
which  would  rob  us  of  everything  if  it  were  to 
triumph.  This  doubt  is  sometimes  due  to  a 
blind  habit  of  questioning  everything,  which 
leads  the  mind  into  a  condition  of  hopeless 
irresolution  and  hesitancy.  There  is  a  story 
of  a  dull  pupil  who  was  the  despair  of  his  tutor 
in  elementary  mathematics.  When  at  last, 
after  much  tribulation,  the  tutor  congratulated 
himself  upon  having  made  him  understand  the 
meaning  of  simple  equations,  his  hopes  were 
dashed  by  a  perplexed  expression  upon  the 
young  man's  face  and  the  question,  But  what 
if  x  should  turn  out  not  to  be  the  unknown 
quantity  after  all?  But,  apart  from  such  a 
disease  of  scepticism  as  that,  there  are  times 
when  we  seem  to  have  reason  to  doubt  the 
validity  of  our  own  experience.  At  such 
times  we  are  not  sure  of  ourselves,  nor  of  the 
true  meaning  and  value  of  the  world  of 
thoughts  and  feelings  within  us.  Indeed  we 
perceive  that  many  of  the  experiences  upon 
which  our  every-day  life  and  thought  actually 


36  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

rest  are  themselves  confused  and  unintelligible. 
Blunders,  shames  and  sorrows,  surprising  suc- 
cesses and  glories,  form  the  stuff  of  that  moral 
and  emotional  tragedy  which  is  ourselves,  as 
memory  and  introspection  reveal  us.  It  baffles 
any  man  to  understand  his  own  soul,  and  in 
what  has  been  called  "  the  endless  vagueness 
of  modern  life"  we  are  far  more  confused 
than  were  our  fathers.  Beneath  our  actual 
character  we  know  that  there  is  heredity  at 
work.  Beneath  all  our  beliefs  there  are  hidden 
predispositions.  We  are  subject  to  changes  of 
mood,  to  passionate  storms,  to  contradictory 
impulses,  and  to  a  seething  swirl  of  questions 
of  all  sorts.  It  is  no  wonder  if  we  are  tempted 
at  times  to  demand  some  solution,  final  and 
absolute,  which  shall  reveal  us  authoritatively 
to  ourselves.  In  older  days  this  trouble  took 
the  form  of  spiritual  despondency.  Men 
asked  whether  they  were  saved,  whether  they 
were  elected,  whether  there  was  any  hope  for 
them  beyond  the  fleeting  hopes  of  earth.  They 
distrusted  their  religious  experience,  ques- 
tioned whether  it  were  authentic,  and  fell  upon 
bitterness  because  of  a  sense  of  chronic  failure 
which  would  yield  neither  to  the  most  strenu- 
ous effort  nor  to  the  most  exalted  visions  of 
faith. 
The  modern  form  is  different.     It  consists 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  37 

of  a  distrust  of  character  and  a  rooted  tend- 
ency to  question  and  reexamine  one's  prin- 
ciples. These  seem  not  to  be  fixed  and  stable 
rocks,  but  rather  things  floating  upon  the  sur- 
face of  the  flood,  whose  location  is  determined 
by  the  will  of  the  tides  of  life.  What  is  the 
meaning  of  all  this?  we  ask,  and  where  can 
we  find  any  permanently  satisfactory  and 
stable  ground  for  belief?  We  have  already 
transferred  the  basis  of  faith  from  accepted 
dogma  to  actual  known  experience,  but  if  our 
experience  itself  be  subject  to  so  much  change, 
what  are  we  to  do  for  faith?  The  answer  is 
that  if  God  be  founding  our  lives  upon  the 
floods,  our  experience  of  God's  grace  must 
be  founded  there  also.  The  consensus  of  opin- 
ion of  Christian  men,  or  at  least  of  the  vast 
majority  of  them,  is  that  the  faith  by  which 
they  have  lived  and  died  was  not  given  them  in 
halcyon  days  of  calm.  Generally  it  came  in 
certainties  that  were  flashed  upon  them  in  the 
midst  of  stormy  waters.  The  condition  of 
mind  in  which  we  receive  our  faith  is  not 
usually  that  of  stable  equilibrium  and  cool  and 
reasoned  thinking,  but  in  turbulent  experience. 
It  is  there  that  we  find  the  characteristic 
foundations  for  personal  faith  and  assurance. 
Man's  sins  and  follies  and  desperations  are  a 
true  and  normal  platform  for  his  faith.     It 


38  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

was  not  the  Psalmist  alone,  but  many  centuries 
of  earnest  men  following  him,  who  might  have 
written  the  undying  words:  He  drew  me  out 
of  great  waters. 

Doubtless  each  one  of  us,  whether  his  faith 
be  of  the  older  or  of  the  more  modern  type, 
will  discover  many  questions  about  himself  and 
his  spiritual  condition  which  he  cannot  answer. 
His  faith  will  find  no  satisfactory  basis  even 
in  his  own  past  experience.  Looking  back 
through  the  years  it  will  be  easy  for  him  to 
question  the  validity  of  high  spiritual  moments 
which  at  the  time  appeared  to  bring  to  him  the 
very  voice  of  God.  A  disquieting  suspicion 
will  come  upon  him  that  his  state  of  grace 
cannot  be  proved  nor  assured,  either  from  the 
character  he  is  achieving  or  from  his  memory 
of  conversion  in  the  past.  All  that  is  not  sur- 
prising. These  are  but  the  floods  on  which 
faith  and  religious  life  are  founded,  and  the 
point  of  wisdom  is  to  take  it  so,  and  to  attend, 
not  to  such  foundations,  but  to  the  one  little 
platform  of  immediate  present  experience 
which  floats  upon  their  surface.  Begin  where 
you  are,  though  it  be  between  sky  and  water. 
Do  not  trouble  about  the  reality  or  the  validity 
of  any  past  experience,  whether  it  be  conver- 
sion or  any  other  whatsoever.  Here  and  now, 
stable  or  floating  upon  the  floods,  choose  God 


THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH  39 

for  your  God  and  trust  His  good  faith  for  the 
treatment  of  your  soul.  Choose  Christ  for 
your  Christ,  to  interpret  the  meaning  of  life 
and  the  redeeming  love  of  God  to  you.  Then 
shall  you  know  most  certainly  that  there  is  a 
Father  in  heaven,  and  that  Christ  saves  men. 


LECTURE  II 
THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY 


LECTURE  II 
THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY 

Acts  17 :  22-32. 

THE  argument  of  the  opening  lecture 
was  that,  in  regard  to  its  ultimate 
foundations,  religious  faith  is  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  position  as  physical  science  is. 
In  neither  case  is  it  possible  to  build  up  a 
system  from  the  bottom  rocks:  in  each  case 
we  are  forced  to  cut  in  at  the  cross-section  of 
our  experience,  and  to  begin  our  construction 
from  that  platform.  If  this  argument  can  be 
made  good,  it  will  form  a  complete  answer  to 
naturalism  in  its  attack  upon  Christianity. 
Yet  every  thoughtful  mind  must  perceive  that 
the  argument  has  raised  further  questions 
which  have  not  yet  been  answered.  Historical 
Christianity  has  not  been  built  only  from 
metaphysical  foundations.  It  has  risen  largely 
from  authority  also.  While  some  believers  in 
every  generation  have  sought  to  find  satis- 
factory proof  of  it  to  the  last  analysis,  all  be- 
lievers have  had  to  reckon  with  the  testimony 

43 


44  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

of  the  Church  and  the  revelation  of  the  Bible. 
These  are  apparently  new  factors,  which  make 
a  difference  between  our  acceptance  of  Chris- 
tian truth  and  our  acceptance  of  the  results  of 
physical  science.  Each  of  them  has  pro- 
fessed to  provide  for  the  believer  an  ulti- 
mate authority,  the  Church  with  its  traditional 
sanctions,  and  the  Bible  with  its  infallible  in- 
spiration. It  is  our  duty  now  to  inquire  into 
these  and  to  ask  in  what  sense  we  are  to 
regard  them  as  ultimate  sources  of  authority. 

The  argument  of  the  present  lecture  is  that 
we  freely  and  with  all  reverence  admit  that 
the  tradition  of  the  Christian  Church  is  a  most 
valuable  and  real  element  in  the  discussion  of 
any  article  of  faith.  We  admit  also  that  the 
Bible  is,  in  a  quite  unique  sense,  the  record  of 
God's  revelation  of  truth  to  man.  But  on  the 
other  hand  we  still  maintain  that  no  external 
authority,  however  venerable  and  however 
sacred,  can  of  itself,  and  so  long  as  it  remains 
external,  dominate  man's  belief.  We  shall  try 
to  show  that  all  such  external  authorities  must 
become  internal  by  their  appeal  to  living  ex- 
perience, and  that  only  when  they  have  proved 
themselves  authoritative  to  the  individual  soul 
can  they  be  rightly  accepted  as  commanding. 
Otherwise  we  would  have  merely  escaped  from 
metaphysical    externality   to    fall    back    upon 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  45 

traditional  externality,  and  would  be  in  no  bet- 
ter case  than  we  were  before. 

I  have  associated  with  the  present  lecture 
one  of  the  most  picturesque  and  remarkable 
incidents  recorded  in  the  whole  history  of  re- 
ligion. Paul  at  Athens  discussing  religious 
problems  upon  Mars'  Hill  is  certainly  a  very 
striking  figure,  and  his  words  on  that  occasion 
touch  most  intimately  the  history  of  Greek 
thought.  The  unknown  God,  the  temples 
made  with  hands,  the  quotation  from  Aratus, 
the  broad  conception  of  the  Father  that  giveth 
to  all  life  and  breath,  and  in  Whom  all  live  and 
move  and  have  their  being,  the  declaration  of 
a  God  Who  is  not  far  from  any  one  of  us — all 
this  comes  home  with  peculiar  relevancy  to  our 
present  subject.  The  Athens  through  which 
Paul  had  passed  to  Mars'  Hill  was  full  of  the 
ruins  of  a  former  day  whose  exquisite  worship 
of  the  Olympians  had  left  the  carved  work  of 
their  temples  already  deep  in  acanthus  and 
whose  former  strength  and  severe  morality 
contrasted  strangely  with  the  garlanded  songs 
of  decadent  revellers  and  the  clash  of  wine 
cups  amid  the  ruins  of  ancient  greatness.  It 
may  not  be  at  first  apparent,  but  the  fact  is 
that  Paul  stands  there  as  a  second  Socrates, 
and  takes  up  the  ancient  message  with  won- 
derful  new   applications.      The   curious   and 


46  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

artistic  Greeks  had  always  tended  to  seek  for 
God,  and  for  all  that  was  highest  in  human 
life,  in  external  things.  They  found  their 
religion  through  nature  and  the  outward  life  of 
man,  through  visible  beauty  and  harmony. 
These  are  good,  but  God  is  apt  to  get  lost 
among  them,  and  Paul  is  here  doing  in  his  own 
way  precisely  what  Socrates  had  done  in  the 
same  city  long  ago:  he  is  leading  them  back 
from  the  search  for  God  among  external 
things  to  the  inner  life  of  the  spirit.  In  many 
details  the  parallel  is  curious  and  interesting 
down  to  that  touch  of  immortality  which  of- 
fended the  older  audience  and  amused  the  later. 
Two  men,  uncouth  of  body  but  wonderfully 
great  in  spirit,  sought  to  lead  two  generations 
back  from  external  things  and  accepted  theories 
to  the  living  inspiration  of  their  own  personal 
experience.  Faith  had  gone  wandering  among 
ideas  and  tales  which  were  detached  from  and 
external  to  the  life  of  man.  One  by  one  this 
externality  had  flung  off  the  details  of  earlier 
faith,  as  things  disregarded  by  the  educated 
and  left  only  to  the  ignorant  and  supersti- 
tious. Meanwhile  God  also  had  been  lost,  and 
there  were  very  few  thinkers  in  Athens,  if  in- 
deed there  were  any,  who  believed  in  Him  in 
any  personal  and  intimate  way.  It  is  certainly 
a  curious  spectacle,  this  of  Saint  Paul  as  a 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  47 

second  Socrates,  recalling  disbelieving  men  to 
the  quiet  center  within  their  own  souls  in  order 
to  find  their  lost  God,  telling  them  that  that 
quiet  center  is  the  only  place  which  God  never 
leaves,  and  virtually  repeating  the  Socratic 
admonition,  enforced  now  by  the  memory  of 
Jesus  Christ,  Know  thyself. 

There  is  much  in  this  incident  that  brings 
us  forward  into  our  own  times.  Held  apart 
by  many  centuries,  utterly  different  in  regard 
to  the  actual  content  of  man's  thoughts  about 
nature  and  the  supernatural,  Paul's  day  and 
ours  have  this  in  common,  that  in  both  of  them 
men  have  been  externalizing  their  search  for 
God,  and  in  doing  so  have  lost  their  faith  in 
Him.  For  many  among  us  the  old  divinities 
are  dead,  and  the  days  of  simplicity  in  faith 
are  behind  us.  Whole  cities  of  men  and 
women  are  living  now  among  the  wreckage  of 
their  broken  gods,  and  the  pathos  of  modern 
life  arises  largely  from  that  fact.  "Of  infi- 
nite sadness  are  the  dying  agonies  of  the  gods," 
and  many  of  us  have  felt  upon  our  spirits  the 
shadow  of  that  great  sorrow.  In  consequence 
of  this  condition  we  find  endless  contradic- 
tions in  the  attitude  of  men  towards  belief. 
Many  who  hold  an  apparent  faith  in  public 
confess  in  private  to  an  actual  disbelief.  There 
are  some  who  are  equally  annoyed  by  the  ar-» 


48  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

dent  faith  of  one  and  the  hearty  denial  of  an- 
other. All  acknowledge  that  the  external 
story  of  our  religion  is  interesting  and  indeed 
fascinating  for  all  students  who  will  examine 
it ;  but  the  recurring  question,  Is  it  true  ?  takes 
away  the  glamour  from  their  appreciation. 

There  are  many  among  us  who  dare  not 
break  their  connection  with  old  faith,  but  who 
in  their  secret  hearts  wish  that  they  had  better 
grounds  for  affirming  it.  They  are  seeking 
substitutes  for  that  faith  in  all  directions,  and 
this  explains  the  many  varieties  of  religions 
which  present  themselves  for  popularity  to- 
day. Some  of  these  are  mere  rechauffes  of 
ancient  speculations  which  pass  themselves  off 
upon  the  ignorant  as  novel  systems  of  belief. 
Others,  under  the  high-sounding  names  of 
sestheticism  or  mysticism,  really  concern 
themselves  with  such  matters  as  the  patterns 
of  wall  papers  and  ingenious  mechanisms  for 
entrapping  the  spirits  of  the  dead.  Many, 
whose  minds  are  better  balanced,  still  fall  back 
upon  Mr.  Huxley's  clever  and  honest  word, 
and  call  themselves  agnostics. 

The  meaning  of  all  this  is  really  a  cry  for 
ultimate  authority.  '  Tell  us  plainly/  they  de- 
mand of  Christian  faith,  'Art  thou  it  that 
should  come  or  do  we  look  for  another?  We 
are  tired  of  compromises  between  faith  and 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  49 

unbelief.  If  the  metaphysical  basis  of  faith 
be  gone,  give  us  some  other  basis  on  which  we 
may  rest-  it.  We  desire  a  city  that  hath  foun- 
dations so  sure  and  certain  that  we  cannot 
dispute  nor  doubt  any  more.  Let  Christianity 
show  itself  inevitable  and  we  will  accept  it. 
We  are  tired  of  intellectual  liberty  and  un- 
chartered freedom  of  thought,  and  all  we  cry 
for  now  is  the  assurance  that  faith  is  such  that 
we  cannot  possibly  escape  it.  Like  Circe  in 
Augusta  Webster's  great  poem,  we  "  crave  that 
one  shall  come  "  to  be  our  master  utterly — yes, 
even  our  tyrant,  if  that  be  necessary.  Let 
Him  recall  us  to  some  true  fold  where  our 
spirits  can  find  rest/  So  we  have  our  Apolo- 
gias and  our  Grammars  of  Assent.  We  con- 
fess that  in  themselves  they  are  not  intellec- 
tually justifiable,  but  then  they  are  so  sorely 
needed,  so  eagerly  desired! 

There  are  many  causes  which  at  the  present 
time  are  leading  men  away  from  the  inner  to 
an  outer  authority  for  their  faith.  There  are 
some  who,  like  Troop  in  Mr.  Wells'  Joan  and 
Peter,  are  "  for  a  simple  and  unquestioning 
loyalty  to  any  one  who  comes  along  and  pro- 
fesses to  be  an  authority.  When  he  mentioned 
the  king  his  voice  dropped  worshipfully."  This 
phase  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  dangerously 
common  in  America,  yet  it  exists  even  here, 


50  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

and  there  are  other  lands  in  which  it  is  com- 
mon enough.  Again  there  is  the  weariness 
which  follows  upon  the  extreme  high  pressure 
of  modern  life,  and  which  makes  any  offered 
resting-place  very  tempting.  Countless  men 
and  women  whose  ordinary  life  is  full  of  ques- 
tions which  they  are  perpetually  straining 
themselves  to  solve,  demand  of  their  religion  a 
place  where  all  that  striving  shall  cease,  and 
they  shall  be  able  to  reach  the  lotos-eaters' 
afternoon  after  the  burden  and  heat  of  their 
busy  and  secular  morning. 

Finally,  there  is  a  growing  self -distrust,  and 
a  sense  of  perplexity  regarding  inner  phenom- 
ena, which  is  perhaps  the  result  of  the  sud- 
den expansion  of  the  field  of  human  knowl- 
edge. Men  acquire  a  habit  of  taking  their 
views  of  ordinary  matters  on  trust,  simply 
because  there  is  no  other  course  left  in  an 
age  of  experts  in  particular  sciences.  For 
most  students  this  does  well  enough,  where 
there  is  no  great  complexity  in  the  search  nor 
importance  in  the  answer  found.  It  certainly 
saves  trouble,  but  it  leads  us  to  live  in  a  world 
like  that  of  the  short-sighted.  In  that  world 
there  are  few  things  which  are  exactly  seen 
or  accurately  known.  Yet  we  see  with  suffi- 
cient clearness  to  get  to  our  appointed  goal  in 
most  cases,  and  we  acquire  the  habit  of  refus- 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  5 1 

ing  to  make  long  journeys  for  whose  guidance 
this  trustful  method  would  not  suffice. 

The  two  great  offers  that  are  made  to  this 
age  are  those  of  the  Church  and  the  Bible. 

1,  The  Church.  In  the  case  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  we  protest  against  the  abso- 
lute claim  of  authority.  Yet  at  certain  times 
the  Protestant  Church  has  made  the  same 
claim  in  its  treatment  of  questions  of  ortho- 
doxy and  heresy.  The  conception  in  both 
cases  is  that  of  an  official  and  authentic  re- 
pository of  truth  which  embodies  and  circum- 
scribes the  world's  religious  knowledge.  The 
Church  claims  that  it  is  given  to  her  to  be  the 
storehouse,  and  the  only  storehouse,  of  re- 
ligious truth.  She  offers  to  take  over  from  the 
individual  all  responsibility  for  his  thinking, 
and  to  settle  all  questions  for  him  with  the 
simple  statement  that  the  Church  has  fixed  this 
dogma,  and  all  that  concerns  him  is  that  he 
shall  accept  it. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  this  claim  is,  for 
many  minds,  extremely  attractive  and  allur- 
ing. It  explains  the  inevitable  drift  towards 
Rome  in  doubting  times.  Some,  like  John 
Henry  Newman,  seem  to  be  so  constituted  that 
this  is  the  natural  way  for  them.  Their  con- 
science of  truth  is  not  so  strong  as  their  cry 
for  certainty  and  rest,  and  they  justify  their 


52  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

acceptance  on  the  ground  that  this  way  has 
brought  them  peace  through  believing.  The 
Protestant  answer  to  this  has  too  often  been 
an  abrupt  accusation  of  dishonesty;  and  it  is 
peculiarly  interesting  to  read,  in  the  light  of 
that  accusation,  Professor  William  James' 
plea,  in  his  Will  To  Believe,  for  the  legitimacy 
of  acceptance  in  cases  where  such  acceptance 
seems  to  be  demanded  for  practical  efficiency 
in  life. 

In  considering  this  point  of  view  it  ought 
to  be  admitted  frankly  at  the  outset  that  there 
is  no  doubt  a  very  real  authority  in  the  Church. 
The  mass  of  Christendom,  the  accumulated 
wisdom  and  experience  of  the  ages,  is  surely 
likely  to  be  wiser  and  richer  in  gifts  of  the 
Spirit  than  any  individual  mind  can  be. 
When  we  consider  the  quality,  both  intellec- 
tually and  morally,  of  many  of  the  Church's 
guides,  we  are  constrained  to  confess  that  it 
would  be  only  the  most  presumptuous  individ- 
ualism which  would  discount  the  testimony  of 
so  many  great  intellects,  so  many  pure  and 
lofty  spirits,  and  so  many  centuries  of  faith. 
Surely  all  those  high  and  choice  souls  have  not 
lived  and  thought  in  vain;  and  there  is  a  kind 
of  arrogance,  which  is  the  fruit  of  littleness 
rather  than  of  greatness,  in  those  who  under- 
rate the  past.     They  remind  us  of  that  kind  of 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  53 

student  who  constructs  for  himself  a  new- 
school  of  philosophy  all  his  own,  and  is  so 
much  taken  up  with  belonging  to  it  that  he  can 
find  no  time  for  reading  any  other  system  of 
philosophy.  In  the  course  of  a  lifetime  dili- 
gently spent  among  the  intellectual  movements 
of  modern  days,  one  becomes  distrustful  of 
amateur  religions. 

Yet  while  freely  admitting  all  that,  there  is 
great  need  for  clearness  in  our  thinking  here. 
Questions  inevitably  arise  which  must  sift  and 
judge  our  right  to  believe,  even  upon  the  au- 
thority of  the  choicest  spirits.  First  of  all 
there  is  the  question  of  loyalty.  There  are 
those,  like  Wells'  Troop,  who  are  inclined  to 
overwork  that  excellent  word.  Loyalty  as  a 
plea  for  submission  to  authority  needs  to  be 
very  closely  examined  before  it  is  accepted. 
There  is  a  difference,  for  instance,  between  the 
loyalties  of  patriotism  and  those  of  belief. 
Some  are  inclined  to  say  that,  just  as  in  mat- 
ters of  patriotism  the  fact  that  this  is  my  land 
settles  all  questions,  so  in  matters  of  religion 
all  questions  ought  to  bow  before  my  church. 
There  is,  however,  a  difference  between  the 
cases.  Questions  of  faith  on  intellectual  mat- 
ters have  to  be  tested  by  individual  standards, 
and  no  loyalty  can  ever  supersede  the  ultimate 
loyalty  of  the  intellect  to  truth.     There  are 


54  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

things  which  we  have  no  right  to  surrender, 
out  of  any  loyalty  whatsoever.  In  friendship 
and  in  love  it  is  not  loyalty  either  to  ask  or  to 
give  these  things. 

"  I  could  not  love  thee,  Dear,  so  much 
Loved  I  not  honour  more." 

Of  such  transcendent  quality  ought  to  be  our 
loyalty  to  truth,  and  the  church  which  seeks 
to  usurp  that  is  in  the  deepest  sense  a  traitor. 

Again,  in  regard  to  patriotism,  and  still 
more  in  regard  to  church  authority,  the  ques- 
tion is  far  more  complicated  than  it  seems  to 
be.  My  land  may  involve  many  reasons  for 
preferring  one's  own  land  to  any  other.  Yet 
that  cannot  mean  that  one  is  persuaded  that 
one's  own  country  always  thinks  and  acts 
rightly.  That  would  be  simply  the  blind  loy- 
alty of  "  My  country  right  or  wrong,"  which 
is  picturesquely  admirable  as  a  sentiment,  but 
is  wholly  immoral  as  a  principle.  For  indeed 
the  truest  loyalty  is  very  far  from  being  blind 
to  the  faults  of  its  object.  It  is  acutely  aware 
of  them,  and  if  it  be  wise  it  will  always  claim 
the  right  of  criticism  as  well  as  of  apprecia- 
tion. Thus,  when  we  say  my  church,  and  say 
it  with  the  utmost  pride  and  affection,  we  do 
not  mean  that  it  is  therefore  infallible,  but 
only  that  it  is  the  best  beloved. 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  55 

Further,  when  we  say  that  we  accept  the 
authority  of  the  Church,  the  question  immedi- 
ately arises,  To  which  church  do  we  refer? 
Had  the  Church  remained  one  and  undivided, 
there  would  have  been  a  greater  show  of  evi- 
dence for  her  claim  to  absolute  authority. 
But,  fortunately  or  unfortunately,  Christen- 
dom has  been  split  up  into  something  like 
seven  hundred  organized  and  recognized  com- 
munions, and  the  outsider  coming  for  author- 
ity to  the  Church  finds  himself  plunged  into  a 
chaos  of  side  issues  and  peculiar  circumstances 
out  of  which  every  separate  creed  and  formula 
arose.  He  finds  himself  confronted  with  the 
duty  of  deciding  the  claims  of  some  at  least  of 
these  various  communions;  and  any  such  deci- 
sion must,  of  course,  involve  historical  and 
other  study.  But  it  is  apparent  that  by  that 
fact  alone  the  seat  of  authority  is  changed.  In 
that  very  study  which  is  imposed  upon  him, 
the  man  is  obviously  judging  the  Church.  He 
must  do  so  if  he  is  to  decide  between  this  or 
that  rival  claim  for  ultimate  authority.  Thus, 
then,  in  the  very  act  of  deciding  which  church 
he  shall  obey,  the  man  is  appealing  to  a  higher 
authority  than  that  of  any  church.  He  is,  in 
fact,  judging  the  Church,  instead  of  the 
Church  judging  him. 

This  consideration  alone  must  end  all  hope 


56  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

of  final  authority  in  the  testimony  of  the 
Church.  Its  faith  is  not  authoritative  in  the 
absolute  sense,  if  we  have  to  find  reasons  for 
holding  that  faith.  There  is  in  fact  a  vicious 
circle  here.  Before  the  Church  can  be  ac- 
cepted as  the  highest  authority,  it  must  itself 
pass  the  tribunal  of  a  still  higher,  and  so  we 
are  thrown  back  again  from  the  external  to 
the  internal  region.  The  tribunal  which  de- 
termines the  authority  of  the  Church  is  in 
some  form  or  other  the  inner  light,  the  reason 
of  man  laid  open  directly  to  the  influences  of 
the  Spirit  of  God. 

Of  course  this  whole  matter  is  dealt  with  by 
the  Church  of  Rome  in  its  own  fashion.  She 
perceives  and  pities  the  confusion  of  voices 
and  the  variety  of  religious  experience.  She 
has  appointed  herself  the  one  authentic  chan- 
nel of  the  Spirit.  Her  one  great  fundamental 
principle  is  semper,  ubique,  et  ab  omnibus. 
This  principle  has  been  held  through  all  her 
generations,  and  it  forms  the  basis  for  her 
doctrines  of  tradition,  of  apostolic  succession, 
and  finally  for  that  of  papal  infallibility. 
Protestantism  challenges  this  claim  at  every 
point.  Of  the  ancient  formula  semper,  ubique, 
et  ab  omnibus,  she  asserts  that  this  is  simply 
not  so.  There  is  no  set  of  doctrines  which 
has  been  always  held.     There  is  none  which 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  57 

Has  ever  been  held  everywhere  nor  by  all.  To 
use  that  formula  is  possible  only  by  one  very 
simple  process.  Eliminate  everything  except 
yourself,  and  then  say  that  you  are  the  only 
one.  Assert,  with  whatsoever  pomp  and  cir- 
cumstance, that  "what  I  don't  know  isn't 
knowledge,"  and  you  may  arrive  at  a  very  sat- 
isfactory intellectual  complacency.  Our  reply 
is  that  to  meet  an  enemy  by  asserting  that  he 
does  not  exist,  is  no  doubt  conclusive  to  one 
in  a  certain  mental  condition,  but  all  its  com- 
fort depends  upon  that  mental  condition. 

But  we  need  linger  no  longer  over  this  as- 
pect of  the  question.  The  battle  of  Protes- 
tantism was  primarily  a  purely  rational  affair. 
Apart  from  its  deeper  religious  content,  the 
Protestant  Church  has  always  contended  for 
ordinary  freedom  of  thought  and  conscience. 
The  very  essence  of  Protestantism  is  the  deal- 
ing of  the  individual  for  himself  with  God, 
and  he  who  has  once  felt  the  power  of  that 
claim,  simply  cannot  hand  over  his  responsi- 
bility for  truth  to  any  church.  Every  Protes- 
tant considers  himself  subject  to  the  Holy 
Spirit's  guidance,  direct  and  independent.  Of 
course,  if  he  be  wise,  he  will  provide  the  Holy 
Spirit  with  material  for  that  guidance,  by 
studying  the  record  of  the  faith  of  other  men 
and  the  Church's  judgment  upon  it.     But  this 


58  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

record  will  only  be  authoritative  to  him  in  so 
far  as  it  finds  responsive  answer  in  his  own 
spirit. 

Apart  from  the  question  of  the  particular 
church  which  has  the  right  to  claim  ultimate 
authority,  another  matter  remains.  The 
Church,  whatever  group  of  opinion  that  may 
mean,  is  a  phrase  which  looks  much  bigger 
than  it  is.  It  is  indeed  very  impressive  to  be 
told  that  we  are  to  bow  before  the  doctrines 
held  ab  omnibus,  but  it  is  impossible  not  to 
ask,  Who  are  the  omnesf  The  real  authority 
of  the  Church  at  any  particular  point  of  time 
can  only  mean  the  opinion  of  a  very  small 
minority  at  that  time.  The  matters  in  dispute 
involve  profound  research  and  thorough  schol- 
arship, and  the  ultimate  authority  must  there- 
fore be  those  proven  authorities,  scholars  and 
searchers,  who  are  entrusted  with  the  task. 
But  within  the  Church  these  are  an  extremely 
small  minority,  and  beyond  them  is  the  vast 
multitude  which  accepts  their  results  without 
personal  examination,  and  yet  swells  the  ap- 
parent authority  of  the  decision.  Very  few 
of  these  are  either  equipped  for  the  task  of  de- 
ciding, or  indeed  capable  of  it.  Fewer  still 
are  either  willing  or  daring  enough  to  face  it. 
Thus  the  authority  of  the  Church  at  any  par- 
ticular time  means,    in  the   first  place,   the 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  59 

thought-out  judgment  of  a  very  few,  and,  in 
the  second  place,  the  prejudices  and  the  com- 
pliance of  the  vast  majority.  These  preju- 
dices and  that  compliance  are  by  no  means 
very  respectable  guides  to  faith.  Doubtless 
they  are  inevitable  for  the  busy  average  man, 
and  he  may  justify  himself  for  trusting  wiser 
minds  and  specialized  labours.  Yet  undoubt- 
edly this  formidable  array,  which  must  neces- 
sarily produce  a  strong  impression  upon  the 
unthinking,  includes  also  the  intellectual  lazi- 
ness of  some,  and  the  cowardice  of  even 
more. 

It  is  replied  that  besides  all  this — the  scholar- 
ship and  the  prejudice  which  combine  together 
to  make  up  the  idea  of  the  Church's  au- 
thority— there  is  a  continuous  stream  of  living 
religious  experience  in  the  Church.  The  his- 
tory alike  of  ancient  heresies  and  modern  the- 
ologies shows  the  Church  rejecting  from  the 
main  stream,  certain  ways  of  thinking  about 
God  and  man  which  prove  themselves  to  be 
spiritually  ineffective.  We  must  answer  that 
that  has  been  by  no  means  the  only  criterion 
by  which  heresy  has  been  distinguished  from 
orthodoxy,  and  that  there  is  an  enormous 
number  and  variety  of  spiritual  manifestations 
which  have  proved  more  or  less  effective  in 
the  past.     Great  differences  have  appeared  be- 


60  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

tween  these  effective  manifestations,  even  upon 
matters  of  faith  which  have  usually  been  con- 
sidered essential,  or  at  least  important.  It 
would  therefore  appear  that,  so  far  as  the 
dogmatic  statement  of  Christian  doctrine  is 
concerned,  very  little  can  be  left  upon  which 
the  tradition  of  the  Church  is  really  authorita- 
tive in  any  compelling  sense. 

Having  found  it  impossible  to  rest  upon  the 
Church  as  the  final  basis  of  authority  the 
Protestant  believer  has  been  supposed  to  fall 
back  upon  the  Bible,  substituting  an  infal- 
lible book  for  an  infallible  church.  There 
are  two  ways,  however,  in  which  the  Bible 
may  be  regarded  as  the  ultimate  author- 
ity in  matters  of  faith.  It  is  possible  so 
to  regard  it  as  to  make  it  as  external  and 
mechanical  an  authority  as  we  found  the 
Church  to  be.  "  For  me  my  Bible  was  the 
most  absolute  of  realities,  and  to  it  I  strove 
my  hardest  to  adapt  the  universe.''  These 
words,  written  by  a  French  Roman  Catholic, 
are  only  too  true  of  the  pathetic  and  impossible 
situation  in  which  many  a  Protestant  also  has 
found  himself.  This,  however,  was  not  the 
view  of  the  great  master  minds  of  the  Refor- 
mation. Luther  fought  most  valiantly  for  the 
freedom  of  the  spirit,  and  Calvin  in  his 
Institutes  shows  how  far  he  was  from  being 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  6l 

an  advocate  of  any  mechanical  rule  of  faith.1 
It  is  true  that,  when  the  free  intelligence  and 
bold  wisdom  of  the  first  reformers  gave  place 
to  the  second  rate  mentality  and  cautious  tradi- 
tionalism of  later  men,  there  were  those  whose 
attitude  to  the  Bible  was  entirely  mechanical. 
Of  such  Protestants  it  would  not  be  unfair  to 
say  that  they  replaced  the  external  and  me- 
chanical authority  of  the  Church  by  an  equally 
external  and  mechanical  authority  of  the  Bible. 
They  found  in  it  the  same  satisfaction  of 
absolute  and  unthinking  obedience  to  authority 
which  the  Roman  Catholic  had  found  in  church 
tradition.  For  them  the  Bible  was  a  set  of 
detached  oracles,  to  be  used  as  proof-texts  for 
doctrines  which  were  formulated  long  after 
the  canon  was  closed,  and  as  clubs  upon  the 
head  of  all  free  inquiry.  Obviously  such  a 
view  of  the  authority  of  the  Bible  is  as  external 
and  as  precarious  as  that  view  of  the  Church 
which  it  discredited  and  superseded.  It  left 
no  room  whatever  for  the  inner  light  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  and  it  made  men  prisoners  of  the 
mind.  Against  all  such  views  the  protest  of 
Saint  Paul  is  final,  The  word  of  God  is  not 
bound. 

Yet  there  always  have  been  others  to  whom 
the  Bible  is  authoritative,  not  upon  any  such 

•Institutes,  Bk.  I,  Chap.  VII. 


62  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

grounds  of  tradition,  but  because  of  the  force 
of  its  appeal  to  their  own  consciences  and 
spiritual  needs.  For  them  it  represents  a 
great  literature,  extending  over  long  stages  of 
time  and  running  through  many  stages  of  a 
nation's  life.  It  necessarily  contains  many 
different  phases  of  faith  and  standards  of 
morality,  for  it  is  the  record  of  a  revelation 
made  by  God  to  the  highest  spirits  of  succes- 
sive generations.  Its  authority  therefore  will 
lie  in  its  power  to  interpret  the  dealing  of  God 
with  man  according  as  man  is  able  to  receive 
such  interpretation.  In  it  we  shall  see  the 
wonderful  patience  of  our  God,  leading  men 
out  slowly  through  darkness  to  light;  not  only 
dropping  by  the  way  sufficient  truth  for  con- 
temporary men  to  live  by,  but  leading  on  to 
Him  Who  is  the  perfect  and  final  truth,  the 
Word  made  flesh.  In  other  words,  the  Bible 
can  never  be  regarded  as  a  dead  and  finished 
statement  of  doctrinal  truths,  but  as  a  living 
Word  of  God  to  men,  quick  and  powerful  in 
its  appeal,  and  certain  of  its  response.  It  is  a 
record  of  the  way  in  which  successive  genera- 
tions were  led  by  God's  grace  to  apprehend 
divine  things,  and  as  a  stimulus  to  later  gen- 
erations similarly  and  still  more  fully  to  ap- 
prehend them. 

Now  what  does  all  this  mean?     It  must 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  63 

mean  that  there  is  an  authority  within  the  soul 
which  is  apart  from  either  the  decree  of  the 
Church  or  the  letter  of  Scripture.  This  in- 
ward authority  convinces  and  legitimately 
commands  the  spirit  of  man.  It  recognizes 
and  appropriates  those  permanent  and  di- 
vinely inspired  truths  which  are  presented  to 
it  by  the  Bible.  We  believe  the  Bible  to  be 
divinely  inspired,  but  we  are  apt  to  ignore 
the  question  how  we  came  by  that  belief.  It 
must  have  been  reached  either  on  the  Church's 
testimony  external  to  us,  or  upon  the  Holy 
Spirit's  testimony  within.  The  Confession  of 
Faith  is  quite  explicit  in  this  matter.  Its 
language  is,  "  The  supreme  judge,  by  which 
all  controversies  of  religion  are  to  be  deter- 
mined, and  all  decrees  of  councils,  opinions  of 
ancient  writers,  doctrines  of  men,  and  private 
spirits  are  to  be  examined,  and  in  whose  sen- 
tence we  are  to  rest,  can  be  no  other  but  the 
Holy  Spirit  speaking  in  the  Scriptures."  * 

Obviously  then  the  ultimate  seat  of  au- 
thority cannot  be  an  external  but  an  inner  one. 
Now  at  last  we  find  ourselves  within  the  soul. 
No  external  authority  can  possibly  be  final,  for 
every  such  authority  must  pass  the  tribunal  of 
the  internal  one  and  must  prove  itself  by  its 
appeal  to  the  soul  itself.  "  Who  then  is  our 
1  Chapter  1 :  10. 


64  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

authority?  I  reply,  It  is  God  Himself.  I  am 
accused  of  believing  simply  because  men  have 
spoken:  and  I  reply  that  I  believe  as  a  matter 
of  fact  because  God  has  spoken,  and  spoken 
not  only  in  the  remote  past  to  others,  but  in 
the  present,  and  to  me."  *  This  is  the  only 
ultimate  authority,  the  only  one  that  needs  no 
further  proof.  Indeed  there  is  no  ultimate 
external  authority.  The  very  words  present 
a  contradiction  in  terms.  All  professed  au- 
thority must  ultimately  be  proved  by  its  con- 
formity with  the  facts  of  inner  experience. 
Thus  we  must  test  both  the  Church's  creed  and 
the  Bible's  claim  by  this  final  test,  their  appeal 
to  the  soul's  needs  and  instincts.  There  alone 
shall  we  find  the  bed-rock  of  faith.  The  claim 
of  either  Church  or  Bible  regarded  as  ex- 
ternal authorities  is  mere  assertion.  Such  a 
claim  must  indeed  remain  so,  because  any 
proof  that  is  offered  in  favour  of  it  can  only 
be  made  valid  by  going  before  some  other 
tribunal  and  appealing  to  some  prior  authority, 
and  that  ultimate  authority  can  only  be  within. 
In  other  words,  no  authority  can  be  authorita- 
tive to  us  until  we  are  constrained  to  assent 
to  it.  But  the  criterion  that  will  regulate  our 
consent  can  never  simply  be  the  fact  that  some 
person  or  some  body  of  persons  tells  us  so.  It 
'A.  H.  Gray. 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  65 

must  have  our  reason  upon  its  side,  and  our 
spiritual  nature  must  judge  and  approve  of  it 
within  our  souls.  Apart  from  our  inner  ex- 
perience and  the  testimony  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
there  is  no  conceivable  authority  which  is  valid 
in  matters  of  religious  faith.  God  has  never 
delegated  His  authority  to  any  person  or  to 
anything  which  might  come  between  Himself 
and  the  spirit  of  man.  He  still  maintains  His 
great  prerogative  of  speaking  directly  to  the 
souls  of  His  children. 

There  are,  of  course,  those  who  in  the  name 
of  religion  have  habituated  themselves  to  dis- 
parage human  nature  to  such  an  extent  as  to 
lead  them  to  distrust  any  inner  criterion  what- 
soever. For  them  the  fallen  and  sinful  soul 
of  man  is  nothing  better  than  a  mass  of  perdi- 
tion, entirely  untrustworthy  in  spiritual  judg- 
ment. We  can  only  reply  that,  lamentable  as 
is  the  condition  of  man's  soul  through  sin,  yet 
its  capacity  for  God  and  for  recognizing  the 
voice  of  God  is  integral  to  its  very  nature,  and 
can  never  wholly  perish  while  the  soul  itself 
survives.  In  this  as  in  other  matters  our  judg- 
ment must  depend  largely  upon  the  eye  that 
looks.  There  are  some  who  see  in  the  deep 
earth  only  decay  and  darkness,  the  bones  of 
the  dead  and  the  fossils  of  the  still  more  an- 
cient dead ;  while  others  see  the  roots  of  great 


66  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

trees  and  the  germinating  life  of  all  the  world. 
Thus  the  earth  is  either  the  tomb  or  the  cradle 
of  the  world.  So  the  soul  is  either  the  place 
of  hopeless  catastrophe,  in  which  all  the 
powers  of  life  are  lost,  or  it  is  the  place  where 
hidden  germs  of  faith  and  hope  are  buried  for 
the  time,  and  which  is  ready  for  the  fructify- 
ing influences  of  the  Spirit  of  God  when  the 
springtime  of  opportunity  shall  come.  At  its 
worst  the  soul  of  man  is  still  capable  of  recog- 
nizing the  truth  of  moral  and  spiritual  facts 
when  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  moves  upon  it. 
Its  power  of  responding  to  these  is  bound  up 
in  the  bundle  of  our  innermost  life.  They  in- 
spire and  they  judge  us.  They  liberate  and 
they  condemn. 

It  may  be  urged  that  all  this  is  nothing  less 
than  mysticism;  and  indeed,  if  the  word  be 
properly  understood,  no  Christian  need  blush 
to  be  associated  with  so  noble  a  company  as 
the  mystics.  They  have  exceeded  the  bounds 
within  which  commonplace  spirits  think  and 
live,  and  have  sometimes  run  wild,  blinded  and 
dazzled  by  their  inner  light.  Let  us  consider 
one  or  two  quotations  from  various  represent- 
ative writers  of  that  school. 

"  Turn  to  thy  heart,  and  thy  heart  will  find 
its  Saviour,  its  God,  within  itself.  Thou  seest, 
hearest,  and  feelest  nothing  of  God  because 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  67 

thou  seekest  for  Him  abroad  with  thine  out- 
ward eye:  thou  seekest  for  Him  in  books,  in 
controversies,  in  the  Church  and  outward  ex- 
ercises; but  there  thou  wilt  not  find  Him,  till 
thou  hast  found  Him  in  thy  heart.  Seek  for 
Him  in  thy  heart  and  thou  wilt  never  seek  in 
vain;  for  there  He  dwelleth:  there  is  the  seat 
of  His  light  and  Holy  Spirit."  * 

"  You  may  do  what  you  like,  mankind  will 
believe  no  one  but  God,  and  he  only  can  per- 
suade mankind  who  believes  that  God  has 
spoken  to  him."  2 

"  The  brightest  light  is  within  ourselves — 
every  soul  has  a  Bible — our  chief  duty  in  this 
world  is  to  keep  the  windows  of  the  soul  wide 
open.  We  are  now  face  to  face  with  a  simple 
and  superb  fact:  the  holiest  place  for  every 
man  is  within  his  own  soul.  It  is  more  awful 
than  the  holy  of  holies  in  any  temple."  ' 

"  We  must  silence  every  creature,  we  must 
silence  ourselves  also,  to  hear  in  a  profound 
stillness  of  the  soul  this  inexpressible  voice  of 
Christ." ' 

These  are  some  specimens  of  very  typical 
mystic  teaching.  In  a  sense  every  Christian 
will  not  only  understand  but  assent  to  them. 

1  William  Law,  The  Spirit  of  Discipline. 

2  Joubert.  8  Bradford,  The  Inward  Light. 
4  Fenelon. 


68  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

We  are  all  mystics  when  we  believe  the  Chris- 
tian faith,  in  so  far  as  we  are  all  under  the 
influence  and  within  the  sound  of  the  inner 
voice  of  the  Spirit.  It  is  true  that  some 
mystics  have  ignored  other  helps  to  faith. 
They  have  run  away  from  all  connection  with 
the  Church  and  its  testimonies,  and  have  even 
treated  the  Bible  as  an  unnecessary  and  im- 
perfect guide  to  truth.  This  is  their  weakness, 
their  temptation  and  extravagance.  When 
they  ignore  and  separate  themselves  from 
these  great  external  sources  of  authority,  they 
cut  off  the  supplies  of  material  upon  which  the 
Spirit  within  them  may  cast  His  light.  In  the 
absence  of  these  they  must  have  recourse  to 
their  own  imagination  for  such  supplies,  and 
no  man  can  forecast  the  wildness  or  the  length 
to  which  such  procedure  may  lead  them.  But 
there  is  no  reason  for  this,  and  there  are  many 
mystics,  both  ancient  and  modern,  who  have 
reverently  preserved  both  the  best  traditions 
of  the  Church  and  the  truths  revealed  in  the 
Bible,  and  have  kept  themselves  from  extrava- 
gance. 

What  then  is  to  be  our  attitude  to  those  ex- 
ternal sources  of  authority  of  which  we  have 
been  thinking?  Shall  we  fling  them  aside  and 
trust  to  nothing  but  the  inner  light  playing 
upon  such  material  as  our  imagination  may  be 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  69 

able  to  supply?  Most  certainly  not.  We 
bring  to  the  criterion  of  the  soul's  experience 
all  that  the  Church  and  the  Bible  have  to  give 
us,  and  our  authority  for  our  belief  will  appear 
in  the  soul's  reaction  to  these  materials  and  the 
truths  it  recognizes  in  them.  Towards  the 
Church's  tradition  every  wise  man  will  be  rev- 
erent. "  One  should  be  fearful  of  being 
wrong  in  poetry  when  one  thinks  differently 
from  the  poets,  and  in  religion  when  one 
thinks  differently  from  the  saints."  *  There 
will  be  in  Church  tradition  many  consecrated 
errors  which  must  be  flung  aside,  for  time  is 
inexorable  and  ultimately  demands  the  expul- 
sion of  all  that  is  not  truth.  Yet  the  great 
mysteries  of  our  faith,  passing  through  the 
experience  of  the  ages,  will  gain  much  con- 
firmation from  the  fact  that  they  have  proved 
sufficient  for  so  many.  The  very  fact  of  such 
long  acceptance  is  in  itself  an  argument  for 
adopting  them,  unless  strong  reason  can  be 
found  for  their  repudiation.  The  general  and 
catholic  views  of  truth  must  surely  have  some 
valid  foundation  if  they  have  commended 
themselves  so  as  to  gain  the  assent  of  the  past, 
and  to  stand  the  test  of  spiritual  application  in 
many  ages. 

Yet  the  Bible  makes  a  far  stronger  appeal 
a  Joubert. 


70  THE  FOUNDATIONS   OF  FAITH 

than  the  testimony  of  the  Church  can  ever  do. 
It  brings  us  nearer  to  those  who  first  received 
it  from  the  Spirit  of  God,  than  the  Church  tra- 
dition which  has  passed  through  the  medium 
of  many  human  hands  before  it  reaches  us. 
This  claim  for  the  authority  of  the  Bible  has 
no  relation  to  detailed  questions  of  historicity 
and  evidence,  which  must  be  judged  upon 
their  merits  like  all  other  such  matters. 
It  remains  sound,  however,  in  regard  to  all 
that  is  essentially  religious  in  the  records  of 
the  Bible.  It  is  not  because  we  find  love  and 
hope,  salvation  and  righteousness,  in  the  Bible, 
that  we  believe  in  them  as  applicable  to  our- 
selves. It  is  because  our  own  hearts  are  cry- 
ing out  for  them,  because  either  they  or  the 
need  of  them  is  in  us,  that  we  understand  them 
and  recognize  their  meaning  when  we  find  it  in 
the  Bible  record.  So  recognized,  we  under- 
stand these  same  things  in  a  new  way  when 
we  find  them  in  our  own  heart's  cry.  The 
Christ  of  the  Bible  answers  and  interprets  all 
our  deepest  needs,  so  that  these  interpretations 
become  part  and  parcel  of  our  very  life.  That 
is  Christian  faith.  It  must  be  added  as  a  pe- 
culiarly relevant  and  interesting  fact  that  all 
these  sources  of  supply  for  religious  experi- 
ence were  themselves  historically  matters  of 
religious  experience  before  they  became  part 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  7 1 

either  of  the  Church's  testimony  or  of  the 
Bible's  record.  The  method  by  which  the 
Scripture  was  inspired  was  the  Spirit  of  God 
moving  upon  the  minds  of  men,  and  it  is  only 
in  so  far  as  the  Spirit  of  Cod  takes  of  the 
things  of  Christ  and  shows  them  unto  us  that 
we  find  within  ourselves  the  conviction  of  the 
truth  which  was  given  to  other  spirits  of  old. 
Church  tradition  and  creed  are,  in  a  remoter 
and  more  indirect  way,  also  built  out  of  ex- 
perience. The  ground  of  all  historic  Chris- 
tian faith  lies  in  the  story  of  Christ  as  it  was 
accepted  by  the  early  Christians. 

"  That  which  was  from  the  beginning, 
which  we  have  heard,  which  we  have  seen 
with  our  eyes,  which  we  have  looked  upon, 
and  our  hands  liave  handled,  of  the  Word  of 
life; 

(For  the  life  was  manifested,  and  we  have 
seen  it,  and  bear  witness,  and  show  unto  you 
that  eternal  life,  which  zvas  with  the  Father, 
and  was  manifested  unto  us;) 

That  which  we  have  seen  and  heard  de- 
clare zve  unto  you,  that  ye  also  may  have  fel- 
lowship with  us:  and  truly  our  fellowship  is 
with  the  Father,  and  with  his  Son  Jesus 
Christ."  % 

It  must  alsD  be  remembered  that  the  prin- 
1 1  John  1. 


72  THE  FOUNDATIONS   OF  FAITH 

ciples  on  which  the  canon  of  Scripture  was 
fixed,  rested  equally  upon  the  religious  experi- 
ence of  the  judges.  It  was  after  consultation 
with  the  various  churches  that  the  votes  of  the 
early  Christian  fathers  fixed  for  all  time  the 
canon  of  the  New  Testament,  and  the  main 
reason  that  they  had  for  their  opinion  upon 
these  matters  was  the  appeal  or  want  of  ap- 
peal of  the  passages  and  books  to  their  own 
religious  necessities.  Thus  the  new  cry  which 
is  heard  everywhere  to-day  for  experience  in- 
stead of  dogma  is  really  a  return  to  the  old  and 
original  way.  Paul  and  John  were  its  first 
advocates.  Jesus  Christ  Himself  began  it. 
Of  course  the  inner  tribunal  cannot  decide 
every  question,  nor  will  it  give  us  any  light 
upon  matters  merely  historic  and  scientific.  It 
will  not  even  be  uniform  and  infallible  in  its 
detailed  answers  to  questions  of  spiritual  prin- 
ciple, and  there  will  be  diversities  of  opinion 
among  Christian  believers  even  upon  very  seri- 
ous matters.  Still,  it  is  alive,  and  it  will  lead 
us  all  in  the  end  in  the  direction  of  the  same 
ultimate  truths.  Whatever  misunderstand- 
ings may  at  any  time  mar  its  testimony  will 
drop  away  as  more  normal  Christian  experi- 
ence succeeds  that  which  has  been  more  or  less 
abnormal.  We  are  not  held  by  the  dead  hand 
of  any  external  authority  whatsoever.      We 


THE  BASIS  OF  AUTHORITY  73 

have  the  witness  in  ourselves — alive  with  our 
life,  and  leading  us  forward  ever  into  new 
fields  and  aspects  of  truth. 

Two  very  practical  consequences  emerge 
for  the  conscience  of  all  who  follow  these  lines 
of  thought.  In  the  first  place  the  method  of 
Christian  advance  is  not  and  cannot  be  the 
laborious  solution  of  separate  doubts  and 
questions  in  matters  of  detail.  Thousands  of 
such  details  are  suggested  by  the  Bible  to 
every  one  of  its  readers.  But  Christian  faith 
consists  not  in  a  uniform  answer  to  all  these 
questions.  It  is  not  gained  by  satisfying  the 
manifold  curiosities  of  the  mind  upon  every 
sort  of  ancient  information.  It  consists  only 
in  those  assurances  which  are  permanently 
and  essentially  religious.  The  only  way  to 
gain  it  is  to  trust  the  soul's  deepest  instincts 
when  they  are  confronted  by  the  traditions  of 
the  Church  and  the  records  of  the  Bible,  and 
to  appropriate  as  our  living  faith  those  assur- 
ances which  the  soul  recognizes  and  claims  as 
truth. 

It  follows  also  that  if  this  be  true  there  is  a 
tremendous  responsibility  laid  upon  us  all  for 
the  condition  of  our  own  souls.  How  pure 
and  how  ingenuous,  how  free  from  distracting 
self-will  and  weakening  self-indulgence  must 
that  spirit  be,  which  is  to  face  the  great  task 


74  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

of  discerning  the  truth  concerning  God  and 
righteousness  and  the  meaning  and  duty  of 
human  life,  as  it  scans  the  records  of  church 
experience  and  Bible  revelation!  This  task 
of  the  spirit  is  indeed  terrible  in  holiness. 
This  high  trust  is  sacred  beyond  words. 


LECTURE  III 
THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD 


LECTURE  III 
THE  CHARACTER  OF    GOD 

The  Lord  is  good. — Psalm  ioo  :  5. 


H 


AVING  argued  that  the  starting 
point  of  faith  and  the  ultimate  seat 
of  authority  must  be  found  within 
the  soul  of  man,  we  now  come  to  face  the 
question  of  the  content  of  that  discovery. 
What  truth  is  it  that  the  soul  of  man  contains, 
and  in  what  sense  does  it  contain  truth  ?  This 
question  meets  us  first  of  all  in  connection 
with  the  idea  of  God,  which  is,  of  course,  the 
supreme  fact  in  religion.  The  mystics,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  talk  of  finding  God  within 
the  soul,  and  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance 
that  before  going  further  we  should  face  the 
question  frankly  as  to  the  meaning  of  this 
claim  of  theirs.  In  what  sense  is  God  revealed 
within  the  soul  ? 

This  brings  us  at  once  back  to  the  remem- 
brance of  an  older  psychology,  which  solved 
all  such  questions  by  its  doctrine  of  innate 
ideas.  This  doctrine  has  been  very  crudely 
conceived  and  expressed.     While  the  clearest 

77 


78  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

thinkers  have  perceived  that  the  mind  does  not 
work  from  ready-made  ideas  with  which  it 
finds  itself  equipped,  yet  there  is  a  wide-spread 
notion  that  somehow  or  other — below  the 
limit  of  consciousness,  it  may  be,  and  yet 
really  present — certain  definite  and  complete 
ideas  are  contained  in  the  mind  very  much  as 
its  contents  are  contained  in  a  box,  and  that 
one  of  the  chief  of  these  ideas  is  that  of  God. 
It  cannot  be  too  strongly  emphasized  that  the 
idea  of  God  is  not  a  ready-made  innate  idea 
at  all.  No  baby  is  capable  of  thinking  of  God 
in  this  fashion. 

The  phrase  innate  ideas  is  really  a  mislead- 
ing expression.  What  is  meant  by  it  appears 
to  be  that,  as  the  experience  of  life  begins  to 
make  its  conscious  records,  man  discovers  that 
he  must  inevitably  hold  certain  conceptions  of 
life  which  necessitate  the  existence  of  God  and 
postulate  it.  It  is  within  the  mind  that  we  find 
all  our  first  hand  knowledge  of  human  life, 
and  all  ideas  which  are  presented  to  the  mind 
are  judged  by  it  to  be  either  true  or  false  to 
life,  either  congruous  or  incongruous  with  it. 
Innate  ideas,  therefore,  are  convictions  with- 
out which  our  whole  conception  of  life  would 
be  chaotic  and  unworkable.  Presented  to  the 
mind  dispassionately,  as  convictions  held  by 
other  men  or  passed  down  to  it  by  tradition, 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  79 

they  at  once  approve  themselves  as  obviously 
included  in  the  impression  which  life  is  mak- 
ing on  us.1  Expressed  otherwise,  we  may  say 
that  God  is  the  first  revelation  of  experience- 
faith.  For  the  moment  we  are  thinking  not  of 
the  form  of  God  but  of  the  fact  of  God.  The 
form  must  be  revealed  otherwise,  as  we  shall 
see;  but  the  fact  is  realized  as  a  necessary 
counterpart  of  all  things  known  anywhere. 
Without  it  nothing  is  complete  and  nothing  is 
intelligible.  It  is  a  necessary  implication  of 
all  finite  experience,  without  which  every- 
thing loses  its  reality.  Thus,  literally,  in 
Him  all  things  live  and  move  and  have  their 
being. 

Astronomers  tell  us  that  the  discovery  of 
the  planet  Neptune  was  made,  not  because  any 
telescope  had  seen  it,  but  because  astronomical 
phenomena  which  had  been  directly  observed 
could  not  be  explained  without  presupposing 
some  such  planet  exercising  its  attraction  upon 
the  system  which  the  telescopes  were  watch- 
ing. In  some  similar  fashion  the  human 
mind  discovers  that  its  system  is  neither  com- 

*Thus,  as  one  may  say,  God  is  seen  by  the  mind  of 
man  obliquely  rather  than  directly,  and  it  may  have  been 
some  sort  of  notion  of  this  kind  which  found  such  in- 
teresting expression  in  the  words  which  Moses  heard, 
telling  him  that  no  one  can  see  the  face  of  God  and  live, 
but  that  it  was  possible  to  see  His  back. 


80  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

plete  nor  intelligible  until  it  has  been  supple- 
mented by  the  postulate  of  God. 

The  next  step  in  the  process  is  to  supply  a 
form  for  the  bare  fact  thus  demanded  by  the 
mind.  The  form  of  God  is  supplied  to  the 
Christian  by  the  revelation  of  the  Bible,  and 
especially  by  the  story  and  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  Christ.  To  the  Christian  consciousness 
the  form  thus  presented  proves  convincing. 
Viewing  God  under  these  aspects,  the  soul 
recognizes  that  this  is  what  has  been  missing 
from  life,  and  this  is  what  it  has  been  seeking. 
The  fact  of  God  is  the  postulate  of  all  human 
experience:  the  form  of  God  is  the  result  of 
that  mysterious  process  which  the  Bible  de- 
scribes as  the  Holy  Spirit  witnessing  with 
our  spirit  within. 

The  conception  which  the  fact  of  God  as- 
sumes as  it  thus  finds  form,  is  essentially  a 
moral  conception.  In  the  revelation  of  the 
Bible,  the  seer  to  whom  the  revelation  is  made 
receives  more  than  he  fully  understands.  The 
common  man,  being  confused  by  many  things, 
understands  the  seer  only  imperfectly.  Yet 
both  seer  and  common  man  have  a  certain 
equipment,  not  only  for  receiving  the  revela- 
tion, but  for  so  far  defining  it.  First,  there 
is  their  own  experience  of  conscience,  and 
their  own  adventures   in  morality,   whether 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  8 1 

good  or  bad.  That  is  to  say  a  man's  char- 
acter, such  as  it  is,  contains  within  it  on  the 
one  hand  elements  of  condemnation  and  of 
shame  for  bad  conduct,  and  of  approval  and 
satisfaction  for  good  conduct  of  his  own.  Be- 
yond these  there  is  his  imagination  of  what 
manner  of  man  he  would  be  if  he  were  morally 
better  than  he  is.  Thus  his  moral  ideas  are 
not  bounded  by  his  own  achievement,  but  are 
in  every  case  further  advanced  than  the 
progress  he  has  been  able  to  make.  His  im- 
agination, which  thus  creates  for  him  a  moral 
ideal,  is  illuminated  and  guided  by  the  idea  of 
Jesus  Christ,  Who  presented  to  man  in  His 
own  person  all  that  can  be  known  of  God  on 
earth  and  under  earthly  conditions. 

That  presentation  was  moral  through  and 
through,  and  every  aspect  of  God  which  is 
presented  to  men  by  Christ  is  essentially  an 
ethical  conception.  Thus,  to  the  awakening 
soul  which  is  already  aware  of  the  fact  of 
God  from  its  own  experience,  the  Bible,  and 
especially  Jesus  Christ,  provide  the  ideas 
which  will  determine  the  form  of  God.  The 
normal  human  spirit  would  at  once  recognize 
these  as  true,  but  the  deepest  complication  for 
human  faith  lies  in  the  fact  that  no  soul  is 
completely  normal.  In  this  way  there  arise 
many  hesitations,   obscurations,   and  perver- 


82  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

sions  in  the  Christian  man's  idea  of  God.  Be- 
cause of  his  own  moral  defects  he  is  not  able 
justly  and  completely  to  deal  with  the  revela- 
tion presented  to  him.  Thus  it  comes  to  pass 
that  we  know  but  in  part,  and  that  we  are 
capable  of  seeing  God  only  in  fragmentary 
glimpses. 

It  will  naturally  be  said  that  if  man's 
knowledge  of  God  can  at  the  best  be  so  frag- 
mentary, and  must  in  every  case  be  more  or 
less  distorted  by  the  weakness  or  the  error  of 
his  own  moral  nature  and  experience,  a  very 
serious  objection  arises  against  the  whole  ar- 
gument of  the  inner  authority.  Does  it  not 
amount  to  this,  that,  since  the  moral  experi- 
ence of  each  man  is  different  from  that  of 
every  other,  it  must  follow  that  if  each  of  us  is 
to  be  his  own  authority  there  will  be  as  many 
gods  as  there  are  men?  Each  man  has  had 
his  own  individual  moral  life,  and  therefore 
each  man  will  interpret  God  in  a  different  way 
from  the  interpretation  arrived  at  by  any 
other. 

To  this  our  answer  as  Christians  must  be 
that  God  is  not  merely  an  idea  but  a  living 
fact.  He  is  not  a  theory  but,  in  the  strictest 
sense,  a  person.  It  would  be  impossible  to  lay 
too  great  stress  upon  this  point.  At  the  pres- 
ent time  there  is  a  very  wide-spread  tendency 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  83 

to  distrust  the  idea  of  personality  in  general. 
One  sees  it  in  regard  to  immortality,  and  a 
great  many  persons  profess  themselves  willing 
to  believe  in  human  immortality  so  long  as  you 
do  not  insist  that  it  is  to  be  personal  immor- 
tality. This  is  one  of  those  refuges  from  diffi- 
culty which  are  entirely  elusive  and  mislead- 
ing. Non-personal  immortality  can  only  give 
comfort  or  satisfaction  to  any  one  so  long  as 
he  refrains  from  examining  the  words  he  is 
using.  Non-personal  immortality  must  in 
every  sense  reduce  itself  ultimately  to  some- 
thing like  absorption  into  the  general  scheme 
of  things,  the  widely  embracing  universe,  into 
which  the  individual  soul  returns  and  with 
which  it  merges  itself.  It  may  suggest  a  set  of 
noble  ideas  about  joining 

"  the  choir  invisible 
Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 
In  lives  made  better  by  their  presence." 

Now  as  a  matter  of  fact  this  is  to  a  certain 
type  of  mind  very  pleasant  and  alluring.  To 
some  it  may  even  seem  to  be  an  object  and 
ambition  great  enough  to  be  worth  much  sacri- 
fice. It  is  the  sort  of  thing  about  which  it  is 
extremely  easy  to  write  poetry.  But,  with  all 
that,  one  fact  remains — it  is  not  immortality. 
If  you  call  it  immortality  you  are  using  words 


84  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

in  a  false  sense,  and  it  so  happens  that  upon  a 
subject  like  this,  such  use  of  words  involves  a 
very  serious  responsibility. 

The  same  holds  in  regard  to  the  personality 
of  God.  It  is  almost  incredible  that  modern 
minds  should  prefer  a  fluid  to  a  solid  concep- 
tion of  the  Deity,  but  so  it  is.  They  delight 
in  the  idea  that  God  is  immanent  in  all  being, 
and  that  we  are  in  touch  with  Him  while  we 
are  enjoying  or  experiencing  every  phase  of 
life.  But  they  shrink  back  from  every  direct 
and  personal  contact  in  which  spirit  may  meet 
with  spirit.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  lan- 
guage strong  enough  to  appeal  to  such  persons, 
asking  them  whether  it  is  God  that  they  are 
seeking  at  all.  For  this  diffused  and  formless 
deity,  in  which  there  is  no  definite  and  personal 
existence  with  whom  we  may  talk  and  be  un- 
derstood, and  who  may  impress  His  mind  and 
will  upon  our  spirits,  is  really  only  a  way  of 
conceiving  of  nature,  and  is  not  in  any  real 
sense  God  at  all.  Just  as  it  would  be  more 
honest,  and  a  great  deal  more  useful,  if  the 
advocates  of  what  they  call  impersonal  immor- 
tality were  to  drop  a  word  they  have  no  right 
to  use,  and  advocate  instead  of  it  posthumous 
fame,  so  it  would  be  equally  advantageous  if 
those  who  talk  of  God  and  yet  insist  upon 
denying    personality   would    leave    the    word 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  85 

God  alone,  and  frankly  proclaim  themselves 
worshippers  of  nature  who  have  no  God. 

Most  of  us,  if  the  truth  be  told,  care  not  one 
straw  what  people  will  say  of  us  after  we  are 
dead,  and  care  very  little  how  long  our  name 
or  our  influence  will  last ;  but  we  do  care  very 
greatly  whether  when  we  cry  into  the  void 
there  be  any  to  answer,  whether  there  be  any 
will  that  backs  our  noblest  struggles,  and  any 
heart  that  can  love  and  sympathize.  So,  for 
our  part,  most  of  us  retreat  from  abstruse  dis- 
cussions, and  as  we  grow  older  find  ourselves 
reverting  to  the  child's  simplicity  towards 
which  Christ  led  us.  The  long  words  and  fine- 
drawn distinctions  about  which  we  used  to 
argue  in  young  days  come  to  seem  so  very 
foolish  and  insignificant,  and  so  amusingly  in- 
adequate, when  we  are  trying  to  deal  with  the 
facts  below  the  surface.  And  one  by  one  we 
lay  down  our  volumes  with  their  philosophic 
definitions,  and  come  home  to  our  Father  in 
the  evening-time  like  little  children. 

All  this,  which  may  seem  to  be  a  digression, 
is  really  relevant  to  our  present  purpose.  It 
is  quite  true  that  various  minds  will  conceive 
of  God  in  various  ways,  but  our  contention  is 
that  our  hope  of  essential  unity  lies  not  in  our 
views  of  Him  but  in  the  fact  of  God  Himself. 
We  believe  in  the  actual  and  direct  revelation 


86  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

of  this  personal  God  to  the  soul  of  man. 
There  may  be  differences  of  apprehension,  but 
in  the  living  fact  there  is  one  essential  unity. 
There  may  be  diversities  of  operations,  but 
after  all  is  said  there  is  but  one  Spirit.  God, 
the  supreme  fact  of  the  universe,  is  revealed  in 
the  Bible,  witnessed  by  the  Church,  seen  in 
Jesus  Christ.  He  is  still  out  after  every  spirit 
He  has  made,  and  He  meets  them  all  according 
to  their  capacity  for  receiving  Him. 

The  next  question  that  faces  us  is  the  moral 
aspects  of  the  God  in  Whom  we  are  to  be- 
lieve. When  the  Psalmist  of  the  one  hun- 
dredth psalm  fell  back  upon  the  assurance  that 
the  Lord  is  good,  he  was  taking  his  stand  upon 
the  ultimate  refuge  of  Christian  faith.  The 
moral  quality  of  God  is  the  essential  charac- 
teristic of  Christianity.  There  have  been  re- 
ligions whose  ultimate  conception  is  that  God 
is  great,  that  He  is  wise,  or  that  He  is  in- 
scrutable and  mysterious.  We  insist  that, 
while  all  these  are  important,  the  one  thing 
necessary  for  us  is  to  be  sure,  and  to  remain 
sure,  that  He  is  good.  "  True  religion  is  a 
conviction  of  the  character  of  God.,, 

This  is  not  only  a  great  but  a  fundamental 
principle.  Religion  may  be  conceived  of  as  a 
device  for  promoting  human  morality,  a  guide 
to  conduct,  a  text-book  of  morals,  or  a  safe- 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  87 

guard  to  public  righteousness.  It  is  indeed  all 
that,  but  it  is  far  more  than  that.  The  char- 
acter of  man  is  important,  but  the  character  of 
God  is  much  more  important.  Our  first  duty 
is  not  to  do  good,  it  is  not  even  to  be  good; 
it  is  to  be  sure  that  God  is  good.  It  is  to  be 
sure  that,  when  we  worship  and  look  up  to 
God,  that  to  which  we  look  is  moral  and  not 
immoral.  The  great  question  is,  What  is  back 
of  the  universe?  What  is  the  essential  truth 
of  it  ?  Is  there  or  is  there  not  "  an  ultimate 
decency  in  things  "  ? "  It  is  true  that  even  in 
the  interests  of  human  character  the  assurance 
of  the  goodness  of  God  is  of  first  importance. 
Our  convictions  about  our  deity  are  necessa- 
rily formative,  and  we  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously model  our  own  lives  upon  that  which 
we  worship.  Apart  from  this  practical  con- 
sideration, however,  there  is  the  far  more  seri- 
ous question  of  the  ultimate  value  of  morality, 
which  determines  our  choice  between  a  moral 
and  a  cynical  view  of  human  life.  We 
struggle  hard  for  goodness,  and,  like  John 
Milton, — strive  to  "  justify  the  ways  of  God 
to  men."  Much  depends  upon  whether  we  can 
succeed  in  this  justification  or  not.     If  good- 

1  Readers  of  Dr.  A.  B.  Brace's  works  will  remember 
the  touching  eagerness,  and  indeed  almost  passion,  with 
which  he  emphasizes  this  point  of  ultimate  appeal. 


88  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

ness  be  simply  a  human  convention,  and  the 
laws  of  morality  nothing  more  than  an  expe- 
dient for  the  conduct  of  human  life,  our  atti- 
tude towards  them  and  towards  all  things  will 
necessarily  be  very  different  from  what  it 
would  be  if  morality  were  our  way  of  being  in 
tune  with  the  universe. 

The  most  deadly  danger  of  our  time  is  the 
moral  scepticism  which  belittles  the  impor- 
tance of  righteousness  and  sin.  If  all  that  we 
call  goodness  is  but  an  expedient  for  keeping 
man  and  society  in  order,  and  has  no  ultimate 
worth  in  it,  then  (if  one  may  echo  a  famous 
phrase)  the  beauty  of  holiness  is  but  a  matter 
in  the  same  class  as  the  colours  on  a  butterfly's 
wings,  and  the  majesty  of  law  has  about  the 
same  ultimate  importance  as  the  protective 
spots  in  a  beetle's  back.  The  certainty  of  the 
ultimate  worth  of  goodness  is  of  the  most 
fundamental  importance.  It  has  been  the 
habit  of  the  Church  to  address  its  God  as  One 
in  "  knowledge  of  Whom  standeth  our  eternal 
life."  It  does  not  say  "  in  obedience  to  Whom 
standeth  our  eternal  life/'  but  "  in  knowl- 
edge." The  Church  has  found  its  eternal  life 
in  knowing  that  all  that  it  taught  men  to 
strive  for  is  part  of  the  character  of  the 
eternal  God.  This  is  the  greatest  revelation  of 
the  Bible,  the  supreme  message  of  Jesus. 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  89 

It  has  been  very  generally  held  that  anthro- 
pomorphism is  the  cause  of  wrong  or  inade- 
quate conceptions  of  the  character  of  God. 
"  The  god  of  a  triangle  would  be  a  triangle," 
and  the  God  of  man  will  similarly  be  found  in 
the  likeness  of  man. 

"  Man  throws  it  up  in  air,  it  drops  down 
Earth's." 

Man  is  supposed  to  deify  his  own  attributes; 
and,  as  man  himself  is  very  far  from  being 
morally  perfect,  his  God  naturally  shares  his 
failings.  Thus  the  Greek  gods  and  goddesses 
were  simply  glorified  men  and  women  of  like 
passions  with  ourselves,  and  even  the  Chris- 
tian conceptions  are  confused  by  the  same  vi- 
cious principle.  Lecky  has  pointed  out  that  in 
the  religious  art  of  the  thirteenth  century  God 
is  always  represented  as  a  pope  in  Italian 
pictures  and  as  an  emperor  in  German  ones. 
A  famous  wit  has  told  us  that  "  An  honest 
God's  the  noblest  work  of  man."  But  as  a 
matter  of  fact  many  of  man's  gods  are  very 
far  from  honest,  and  the  wide  variety  of  good 
and  evil  conceptions  which  is  covered  by  the 
one  word  God  in  the  history  of  religion,  is 
supposed  to  be  entirely  due  to  the  similar 
variety  in  the  character  of  the  men  who 
formed  these  ideas  of  God.     In  the  words  of 


90  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

Charles  Dickens,  "  Verily,  verily,  travellers 
have  seen  many  monstrous  idols  in  many 
countries:  but  no  human  eyes  have  ever  seen 
more  daring,  gross,  and  shocking  images  of 
the  divine  nature,  than  we  poor  creatures  of 
the  dust,  make  in  our  own  likeness  of  our 
own  bad  passions." 

In  regard  to  this  whole  subject  there  is 
much  to  say  for  the  probability  that  man  has 
made  his  gods  in  his  own  image,  and  it  is  by 
no  means  to  his  discredit  that  he  has  done  so. 
When  one  thinks  of  that  rage  for  astronomical 
divinities  which  characterized  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  one  feels  a  kind  of 
wonder  at  the  popularity  with  which  it  was 
then  received.  Men  fell  upon  the  magnificent 
Olympians  of  the  Greek  Pantheon,  and  seemed 
to  take  a  kind  of  truculent  delight  in  reducing 
them  to  terms  of  spring  and  winter,  of  dawn 
and  twilight,  and  of  day  and  night.  A  still 
sadder  exchange  from  the  splendours  of  these 
same  stories  is  made  by  those  who  adopt  the 
modern  cult  of  reducing  them  all  to  vege- 
tables. Apollo  turns  out  to  be  the  apple-tree; 
Aphrodite,  in  sadly  reduced  circumstances,  is 
no  better  than  the  mandrake;  and  Artemis 
herself  has  fallen  to  the  low  estate  of  a  mere 
mugwort.  One  understood  in  older  times  that 
the  Olympians  came  to  Greece  from  the  moun- 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  9 1 

tain  and  the  valley  of  Olympus,  but  now  it 
would  seem  that  they  are  only  the  latest  ar- 
rivals from  a  neighbouring  market-garden. 
The  spirit  of  the  present  time  revolts  from  all 
this  and  loves  to  think  of  the  Olympians,  and 
of  noble  divinities  of  other  lands,  as  shadowy 
forms  of  men  and  women  dimly  remembered 
and  passed  on  into  tradition.  They  are  not 
abstract  virtues  or  vices,  but  strong  and  clear 
types  of  human  life,  bearing  with  them  into 
their  divine  estate  both  the  good  and  evil 
which  entered  into  their  human  lives  and 
clung  to  their  legends. 

While,  however,  one  repudiates  the  reduc- 
tion of  these  very  human  personalities  to  any- 
thing that  is  less  than  human,  and  admits  that 
something  of  the  imperfect  character  of  the 
ancient  gods  must  have  been  due  to  the  hu- 
manness  of  their  origin,  yet  it  seems  to  me 
that  the  most  reasonable  explanation  for  the 
defective  views  which  men  have  held  concern- 
ing the  character  of  their  God  or  gods  is  not 
anthropomorphism.  It  is  the  extraordinary 
difficulty  which  confronts  every  seeker,  in  the 
facts  of  human  life  and  the  ways  of  Provi- 
dence. Man,  even  in  his  savage  condition,  is 
not  likely  to  attribute  all  that  he  finds  in  him- 
self to  his  God.  He  tends  to  attribute  the  best 
that  he  finds  within  himself  to  the  Higher 


92  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

Power.  He  is  intelligent  enough  to  distin- 
guish between  his  failure  and  his  success  in 
moral  life,  viewed  under  whatever  lights  he 
has.  The  farther  he  himself  is  from  excel- 
lence, the  more  naturally  does  he  appeal  to  a 
higher  excellence  than  his  own.  We  can  see 
this  very  clearly  illustrated  in  those  tales  of 
the  Old  Testament  and  of  the  Greek  myth- 
ology in  which  mortals  protest  against  the 
conduct  of  their  God  as  they  are  able  to  see 
it.  When  Abraham  asks,  Shall  not  the  judge 
of  all  the  earth  do  right?  he  is  protesting  by 
the  light  of  his  own  conscience  against  conduct 
on  the  part  of  God  which  he  could  not  justify 
and  would  not  adopt  for  himself.  The  same 
protest  recurs  in  the  book  of  Job,  and  the  whole 
attitude  of  the  earlier  chapters  of  that  book 
is  precisely  the  same  as  Abraham's.  The  story 
of  the  Greek  Titans  further  confirms  this 
view,  and  the  greatest  of  all  the  Greek  stories, 
that  of  Prometheus,  is  a  profound  and  far- 
seeing  exposition  of  it.  In  the  first  of  the 
three  Prometheus  plays  Prometheus  is  en- 
tirely rebellious,  and  exclaims  to  Zeus,  "  Thou 
wist  what  unjust  things  I  suffer."  It  is  true 
that  a  reconciliation  follows,  much  as  in  the 
book  of  Job,  and  a  fuller  understanding  of  di- 
vine ways  leads  Prometheus  back  from  his  re- 
bellion into  acquiescence.     Shelley,  however, 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  93 

taking  up  the  old  tale,  declines  to  follow 
JEschylus  past  the  first  phase,  and  has  en- 
riched our  literature  with  perhaps  the  most 
daring  protest  against  the  ways  of  God  that 
was  ever  penned  by  man. 

Now  it  is  to  be  noted  that  this  protest  is  not 
blamed  but  honoured.  Very  patiently  Job, 
Abraham,  and  the  psalmists  are  led  back  to  a 
higher  truth,  or  a  conviction  of  a  deeper  vir- 
tue in  the  God  they  have  misunderstood,  but  in 
the  meantime  the  bold  remonstrance  is  not  re- 
garded as  too  bold.  In  Micah  and  in  Isaiah 
Jehovah  calls  for  argument  with  men.  The 
attitude  of  protest  is  always  treated  honour- 
ably and  respectfully.  Jesus,  in  His  teaching 
about  the  same  problem,  turns  men's  minds 
away  from  the  inscrutable  mystery  of  Provi- 
dence and  leads  them  to  the  Father  by  another 
road.  He  emphatically  tells  them  that  the  vic- 
tims of  Pilate's  massacre  and  of  the  falling 
tower  of  Siloam  must  not  be  regarded  as  sin- 
ners above  all  other  sinners,  whom  God  is 
punishing  for  their  sins.  These  are  the  vic- 
tims of  Providence,  which  is  but  a  religious 
way  of  speaking  of  the  laws  of  nature ;  and  in 
nature,  as  it  has  been  excellently  said,  "  there 
are  no  rewards  or  punishments:  there  are  con- 
sequences." For  the  deeper  view  which,  of 
course,  is  absolutely  ethical,  Jesus  points  His 


94  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

disciples  to  Himself  and  tells  them,  He  that 
hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father. 

The  most  familiar  instance  of  anthropo- 
morphism in  religious  thought  is  afforded  by 
the  fact  that  in  general  the  first  idea  of  God 
entertained  by  a  child  is  gained  from  his 
knowledge  of  his  parents.  In  so  far  as  the 
father  and  the  mother  fail  to  stand  for  ideals 
which  commend  themselves  to  the  child's  con- 
science, his  idea  of  God  will  fail.  Either  he 
will  think  of  God  as  also  failing  in  these 
respects,  or  he  will  appeal  from  the  failure 
of  the  parents  to  some  hoped-for  nobility  in 
the  God  they  have  misrepresented.  Yet  as  a 
matter  of  fact  human  nature  is  more  intelli- 
gent than  people  give  it  credit  for,  and  in  the 
main  children  will  identify  their  thought  of 
God  with  those  qualities  for  which  conscience 
and  love  are  seeking.  It  is  along  this  line  that 
we  see  the  greatness  of  Christ's  psychology  in 
the  eternal  phrase,  our  Father.  That  phrase 
alone  is  a  magnificent  protest  against  our  at- 
tributing any  of  our  human  weaknesses  to 
God.  We  are  not  such  fools  as  to  pass  on  to 
Him  things  which  our  own  nature  repudiates 
as  unworthy  of  it.  You  are  not  good,  and  I 
am  not  good,  but  both  of  us  would  like  to  be 
good.  We  need  and  we  demand  a  God  better 
than  ourselves.    We  look  around  to  see  if  we 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  95 

can  find  traces  of  Him  in  the  world,  but  we 
find  only  that  Providence  which  is  so  often  ap- 
parently unreasonable,  and  which  sometimes 
seems  to  be  utterly  immoral.  In  a  word,  the 
reason  for  our  defective  conceptions  of  God 
is  not  mainly  our  attributing  to  Him  the 
poorer  elements  of  our  own  character:  it  is  our 
experience  of  nature  and  of  life  around  us, 
which  continually  shock  our  moral  sense  by 
their  regardlessness  and  apparent  injustice. 
It  appears  then  that  the  main  cause  of  man's 
misunderstanding  of  God  is  his  experience  of 
life.1 

It  is  conspicuously  true  that  all  arguments 
to  the  being  of  God  from  the  facts  of  nature, 
like  those  of  Butler's  Analogy,  cut  both  ways, 

1 "  He  that  is  unjust  is  also  impious.  For  the  Nature 
of  the  Universe,  having  made  all  reasonable  creatures 
one  for  another,  to  the  end  that  they  should  do  one  an- 
other good;  more  or  less,  according  to  the  several  per- 
sons and  occasions ;  but  in  no  wise  hurt  one  another ;  it 
is  manifest  that  he  that  doth  transgress  against  this  his 
will,  is  guilty  of  impiety  towards  the  most  ancient  and 
venerable  of  all  the  Deities."  How  gladly  would  I  be- 
lieve this !  That  injustice  is  impiety,  and  indeed  the 
supreme  impiety,  I  will  hold  with  my  last  breath ;  but  it 
were  the  merest  affectation  of  a  noble  sentiment  if  I 
supported  my  faith  by  such  a  reasoning.  I  see  no  single 
piece  of  strong  testimony  that  justice  is  the  law  of  the 
universe ;  I  see  suggestions  incalculable  tending  to  prove 
that  it  is  not. — Private  Papers  of  Henry  Ryecroft  (Giss- 
ing). 


96  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

and  tend  quite  as  directly  towards  atheism  as 
they  do  towards  belief.  Nature  and  the  ex- 
ternal facts  of  life,  moving  under  the  un- 
broken sweep  of  natural  law,  are  certainly 
responsible  for  the  majority  of  man's  defect- 
ive conceptions  of  his  God,  and  the  Prome- 
theus of  the  Greek  tragedy  is  typical  of  man  in 
all  ages  protesting  against  the  inferior  morals 
of  the  powers  about  him. 

There  are  relics  of  Providence  in  many 
popular  conceptions  of  God  which  have  sur- 
vived even  among  Christians.  Perhaps  the 
most  striking  of  these  is  the  tendency  to  re- 
gard Him  as  jealous.  While  there  is  a  sense 
in  which  purest  righteousness  must  always  be 
jealous,  and  must  refuse  to  share  its  supreme 
rule  with  any  rival  which  stands  for  unright- 
eous passion  or  desire,  yet  the  idea  of  God 
grudging  us  the  choicest  gifts  of  life,  of  His 
watching  with  envious  eyes  the  joy  and  love 
which  any  life  may  attain,  is  an  idea  which 
wherever  it  is  found  is  nothing  less  than  pa- 
ganism. One  sees  it  in  the  anxiety  of  some 
parents  about  the  danger  of  specially  dear  and 
beautiful  children,  and  in  our  amazing  inter- 
pretation of  the  death  of  those  we  love  most 
tenderly,  as  being  due  to  some  displeasure  on 
the  part  of  God  that  we  have  given  our  hearts 
to  them.    As  we  have  said,  there  is  nothing 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  97 

that  could  be  more  obviously  pagan  than  any 
such  idea  of  a  rivalry  between  love  human  and 
divine.  Christ  continually  took  our  human 
love  for  a  symbol  and  vehicle  of  the  divine 
love,  and  taught  men  through  their  human  af- 
fections to  realize  that,  back  of  these  and 
prompting  them  all,  was  the  infinite  love  of 
the  Father,  more  tender,  more  passionate,  and 
more  constant,  than  any  of  our  human  loves 
can  be.  His  often  repeated  phrase  was,  after 
an  appeal  to  their  knowledge  of  how  a  human 
father  acts,  "  How  much  more  will  your  Fa- 
ther which  is  in  heaven  give  good  gifts  unto 
His  children."  In  other  words,  life  as  we 
know  it  at  its  best  is  good,  but  God  is  better 
than  life;  and  it  is  because  of  that  that  we 
can  trust  Him  and  rejoice  in  Him. 

Another  point  in  which  the  character  of 
God  has  been  defectively  conceived  is  that  of 
vanity.  In  many  of  our  hymns,  and  perhaps 
still  more  of  our  prayers,  the  God  Who  is  ad- 
dressed seems  to  be  concerned  about  His  glory 
and  our  praise  of  Him  in  a  fashion  which 
would  make  us  ashamed  of  any  friend  who  de- 
manded such  an  attitude  of  adulation.  It  is 
probable  that  this  is  a  survival  of  the  pomps 
of  ancient  kingdoms  and  the  royal  splendours 
of  barbaric  states.  We  have  taken  these  over 
into  our  conception  of  a  heaven  which  is  full 


98  THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

of  preraphaelite  decoration,  and  which  would 
bore  any  sensible  and  well-conditioned  young 
man  to  tears  after  a  day  of  it.  In  all  this 
meretricious  splendour  there  is  an  unconscious 
blasphemy,  and  there  is  a  very  injurious  mis- 
understanding of  the  meaning  of  God's  glory 
and  His  delight  in  praise.  All  the  teaching  of 
the  Bible  goes  to  show  that  His  glory  is  in  the 
well-being  of  His  creatures,  and  is  but  another 
fact  of  His  love.  He  is  glorified  in  His  saints, 
and  their  best  way  of  praising  Him  is  to  show 
in  their  lives  some  appreciation  of  His  mercy 
and  some  likeness  to  His  character. 

Again,  nothing  is  commoner  than  a  fatal- 
istic view  of  the  arbitrary  will  and  power  of 
the  Most  High.  This  is  no  doubt  connected 
with  that  fatalism  which  must  have  originally 
sprung  from  a  sense  of  man's  helplessness 
among  the  huge  powers  of  nature,  and  which 
has  sometimes  corrupted  the  splendid  basal 
truth  of  Calvinism  and  made  the  human  heart 
rebel  against  its  teachings.  From  this  bad  be- 
ginning it  is  easy  to  pass  into  still  further 
lengths  of  misjudgment,  and  we  frequently 
hear  God  referred  to  as  "  an  angry  judge." 
Has  it  never  occurred  to  any  of  those  who  use 
that  phrase  that  the  first  necessity  for  just 
judgment  is  that  the  judge  shall  be  calm  and 
impartial?     An  angry  judge  is  a  moral  con- 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  99 

tradiction  in  terms.  It  has  led  men  still 
further  astray,  until  whole  nations  have  taken 
it  as  a  first  principle  of  religion  that  their  God 
regards  them  with  an  altogether  unjust  par- 
tiality. The  God  of  the  Pharisees  was  a  God 
of  the  most  blatant  favouritism,  and  the 
prophets  of  Israel  were  continually  tilting 
against  the  blind  conviction  that  Jerusalem 
and  the  Jewish  nation,  having  been  chosen  by 
the  Most  High  for  His  own,  could  never 
perish,  however  much  they  sinned. 

These  things  are  not  generally  expressed  in 
so  crude  a  fashion  as  this,  but  they  haunt 
many  a  devout  Christian  soul  until  it  regards 
resignation  as  the  noblest  of  virtues.  But 
resignation  often  implies  an  unexpressed  sense 
of  unreasonableness  in  the  divine  attitude  and 
action  towards  men.  If  we  believe  God  to  be 
unreasonable,  we  have  no  right  to  be  resigned 
to  Him.  The  only  decent  attitude  for  a  moral 
being  is  to  rebel.  Prometheus,  Abraham,  Job, 
and  many  of  the  psalmists  take  our  breath 
away  by  their  daring  refusal  to  comply  with 
actions  which  have  not  convinced  their  con- 
science, and  it  is  only  by  such  straight  dealing 
that  we  shall  ever  reach  the  peace  that  comes 
of  faith.  "  We  can  trust  the  good  God  in  the 
end,"  says  a  famous  Frenchman.  We  agree, 
but  it  is  only  because  He  will  turn  out  to  be  the 


IOO        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF   FAITH 

good  God  that  we  have  any  right  to  trust  Him. 
Connected  with  this  sense  of  arbitrariness  in 
God,  is  the  still  more  widely  diffused  and 
lamentable  fact  that  the  God  of  many  people 
is  really  devoid  of  all  intelligence.  The  being 
which  they  think  of  as  divine  is  one  whose 
actions,  and  whose  point  of  view  generally, 
would  be  regarded  as  sheer  stupidity  in  any 
mortal  whom  men  were  criticizing.  This  has 
been  a  sad  plague  to  popular  theology  since 
the  days  when  the  prophets  exclaimed  against 
it  in  the  memorable  words,  "  He  that  made  the 
eye,  shall  He  not  see  ?  " 

All  these,  and  other  seriously  defective 
characteristics  which  have  been  attributed  to 
God  by  loosely  expressed  doctrines  including 
that  of  the  atonement,  are  very  serious  fac- 
tors in  the  religious  problem  of  the  present 
time.  They  are  all  phases  of  the  same  great 
curse  of  local  gods  which  is  the  very  essence 
of  idolatry.  When  we  talk  about  idolatry  and 
heathenism,  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  pass  over 
all  our  criticisms  at  once  to  what  we  call 
heathen  countries.  There  is  idolatry  in  Chris- 
tendom as  well  as  outside  it,  and  it  is  worse 
than  that  which  it  criticizes.  Idolatry  may  be 
either  a  progress  or  a  decline  in  a  nation's  re- 
ligious life.  In  many  a  heathen  land  it  is  an 
advance  from  some  poorer  form  of  primitive 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  IOI 

worship  or  fear,  but  for  us  it  is  always  and 
only  a  decline  and  degeneration.  Christianity 
proclaims  the  universal  God,  Father  of  all  the 
universe,  and  in  a  special  sense  of  all  its  hu- 
man inhabitants.  Man  in  his  ignorant  vanity 
allows  his  provincialism  and  the  narrowness 
of  his  own  interests  to  shrink  his  universe  into 
a  local  club  in  which  he  and  a  certain  number 
of  his  fellow  mortals  find  their  home.  His 
God  shrinks  with  the  shrinkage  of  his  world, 
and  so  you  have  at  once,  under  whatever  high 
sounding  names  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts  or  the 
Almighty  God,  a  local  deity  with  a  narrower 
sphere  of  influence  than  many  of  the  tribal 
gods  of  pagans.  It  has  been  admirably  said  of 
the  deists  by  Anatole  France  that  "  The  deists 
make  a  moral,  philanthropical  and  prudish 
God  for  their  own  use,  with  Whom  they  en- 
joy the  satisfaction  of  a  perfect  understand- 
ing, akin  to  the  government,  temperate, 
weighty,  exempt  from  fanaticism."  It  is 
much  to  be  feared  that  to  many  Christians  the 
God  Whom  they  worship  is  morally  conceived 
in  a  still  more  unworthy  fashion.  To  some 
He  is  but  the  head  of  the  ecclesiastical  party 
or  denomination  to  which  they  belong.  To 
others  He  is  but  the  chief  supporter  of  their 
peculiar  theological  tenets.  It  is  inconceivable 
how  much  moral  loss  there  has  been  to  faith, 


102        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

and  ultimately  to  character,  through  this  sort 
of  thing.  When  the  Highest  Himself  de- 
scends to  the  role  of  a  mere  partisan  leader 
in  church  or  state,  what  is  there  left  to  wor- 
ship? 

One  can  hear  a  protest  from  those  to  whom 
such  lines  of  thought  are  new,  "  Forbear  thee 
from  meddling  with  God  Who  is  with  me." 
These  words  are  indeed  taken  from  the  Bible, 
but  they  are  the  cry  of  a  heathen  king  against 
Josiah  of  Israel,  who  presumably  might  have 
made  a  suitable  reply.  They  are  indeed 
echoed  by  many  Christian  people  to-day. 
Thomas  Carlyle  was  very  indignant  on  hear- 
ing Hall  preach  eloquently  upon  God  that  can- 
not lie.  Yet  it  is  possible  that  not  only  Carlyle, 
but  many  who  profess  a  far  fuller  religious 
faith  than  his,  might  do  well  to  pause  and  see 
whether  their  conception  of  God  will  stand  in 
the  judgment  of  an  ordinary  man's  conscience; 
and  they  may  be  very  well  assured  that,  if 
their  God's  principles  and  character  can- 
not bear  examination,  He  is  not  much  of  a 
God. 

It  is  quite  true  that  he  who  seeks  to  take 
away  bad  gods  from  men  must  substitute  a 
God  that  is  good.  When  we  think  of  it,  that 
was  precisely  what  Christ  did  for  the  Phari- 
sees, and  it  must  have  been  a  wonderful  ex- 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  103 

perience  to  those  who  followed  Him  to  find 
that  the  God  to  Whom  they  looked,  and  Who 
held  their  spirits  in  His  hand,  was  actually 
One  Who  could  be  counted  upon  for  a  reason- 
able understanding  and  a  just  judgment  of 
their  lives.  The  principle  upon  which  Christ 
acted  in  this  matter,  and  the  principle  which 
is  involved  in  all  such  protests,  is  that  the  God 
Whom  we  worship  must  have  the  same  moral 
standards  as  those  which  we  find  within  our 
own  breasts.  The  position  is  summed  up  ad- 
mirably by  Whittier  in  his  famous  saying,  that 

"  Nothing  can  be  good  in  Him 
Which  evil  is  in  me." 

We  must  refuse  to  admit  that  anything  is  good 
because  God  does  it,  and  substitute  for  that 
error  the  truth  that  God  does  the  thing  be- 
cause it  is  good.  The  former  view  has  led  in 
every  age  to  a  cringing  attitude  towards  God 
in  which  conscience  has  disappeared.  If  good- 
ness is  an  arbitrary  matter  depending  upon  the 
caprice  of  the  Highest,  then  His  Church  will 
sooner  or  later  model  upon  His  morality.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  this  has  often  happened,  and 
the  result  of  it  has  been  the  evil  doctrine  of 
the  end  justifying  the  means,  and  of  anything 
being  legitimate  which  tended  towards  the 
glory  of  God  or  of  the  Church.    The  one  vital 


104        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

principle  without  which  there  is  no  security 
against  all  manner  of  degeneration  is  that  the 
same  principles  of  right  and  wrong  which  bind 
us  bind  Him  also,  and  apply  as  strictly  to  the 
divine  nature  as  to  the  human. 

It  is  in  this  connection  that  we  come  in  sight 
of  the  whole  matter  of  man's  communion 
with  God.  There  have  been  many  ways  in 
which  communion  with  God  has  been  under- 
stood, and  the  religious  world  may  be  on  the 
whole  divided  into  two  sections,  according  to 
its  view  in  this  matter.  Worship  in  many 
lands  has  been  regarded  simply  as  the  per- 
formance of  a  proper  ritual.  If  one  used  the 
right  words,  and  performed  the  right  cere- 
monies punctually  and  carefully,  a  good  rela- 
tion was  established  between  the  worshipper 
and  his  God,  whereas  any  failure  or  delay  in 
these  matters  led  to  alienation  and  might  be 
visited  with  punishment.  We  cannot  too 
strongly  insist  that  such  worship  presupposes 
an  impossible  God.  The  organ  for  knowing 
God  is  an  intelligent  conscience.  The  only 
communion  worthy  of  the  name  consists  in 
having  a  common  thought  and  feeling  about 
things  in  general,  and  a  common  conscience 
of  good  and  evil,  with  Him.  But  if  this  be  so 
it  is  obvious  that  every  possibility  of  commun- 
ion depends  upon  common  standards,  without 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  105 

which  there  is  nothing  left  for  religion  but 
mindless  and  conscienceless  performances. 

It  is  very  wonderful  how  a  common  con- 
science leads  us,  under  the  guidance  of  Christ, 
to  communion  with  God.  Any  event  or  ex- 
perience of  life  may  be  taken  up  into  this  com- 
munion, but  by  far  the  most  intimate  and  im- 
portant element  in  it  will  be  that  which  is  pro- 
duced by  questions  connected  with  sin  and 
righteousness.  Our  very  sins  make  us  to 
know  His  goodness  by  the  sharp  and  blinding 
contrast.  If  our  God  be  moral  along  the  same 
lines  and  with  the  same  standards  as  we  are, 
then  indeed  He  is  a  consuming  fire.  The  con- 
science of  sin  takes  on  a  new  terror  when  we 
realize  that  in  transgressing  our  own  standards 
we  have  ranked  ourselves  against  our  God. 
As  the  Arab  in  his  prayer  draws  a  circle 
around  him  in  the  sand  and  feels  himself 
within  that  circle  cut  off  from  all  the  world 
and  shut  in  with  Allah,  so  our  sins  form  a 
flaming  circle  around  us.  Nothing  else  in  all 
the  world  matters  but  the  fact  that  conscience 
turning  to  God  exclaims,  Against  Thee,  Thee 
only,  have  I  sinned.  It  is  this  that  lends  its 
desperate  seriousness  to  the  situation.  It 
sweeps  us  past  all  other  standards  of  morals, 
and  makes  it  impossible  for  any  intelligent 
man  to  take  refuge  in  these,  as  so  many  pro- 


106        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

fessed  Christians  do.  Nothing  can  be  justi- 
fied merely  because  others  do  it,  however  good 
and  admirable  these  others  may  be.  The  fire 
of  our  own  conscience  has  come  between  us 
and  them,  shutting  us  in  with  a  stricter  tribu- 
nal. No  plea  of  propriety,  no  guarantee  of 
respectability  counts  for  anything  here. 
There  can  be  no  longer  any  meticulous  tri- 
fling with  petty  sins,  as  if  we  were  confronting 
a  God  Who  was  interested  in  our  failures  in 
the  observance  of  ritual. 

For  within  our  fiery  circle  we  discover  love 
in  the  heart  of  purity.  The  perfect  goodness 
of  our  God  is  not  cold  but  passionate.  He  Js 
not  concerned  with  any  breaches  of  arbitrary 
law.  He  is  breaking  His  heart  over  the  ter- 
rible black  tragedy  of  real  sins  on  the  part  of 
His  worshippers.  He  is  concerned  about  the 
huge  calamity  of  man's  transgressions.  For 
Him,  goodness — that  very  same  goodness 
which  judges  us — is  eternal  and  majestic.  His 
righteousness  is  like  great  mountains  and  His 
judgments  are  deep  as  floods.  He  comes  to  us 
not  as  a  merchant  to  bargain  with  us  concern- 
ing our  conduct,  but  as  one  who,  seeing  the 
utter  tragedy  of  sin,  can  meet  us  only  in  the 
still  more  tragic  redemption  which  we  see  in 
the  cross  of  Christ. 

Further,  if  His  standards  and  ours  are  one, 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  107 

in  our  communion  with  God  we  find  Him 
building  up  our  broken  righteousness.  God  is 
essentially  creative,  and  the  most  wonderful 
thing  He  makes  is  human  character.  The 
ideal  goodness  for  man  ceases  to  be  mere  ab- 
stinence from  things  forbidden,  and  becomes 
positive  and  practical,  a  creative  righteousness 
in  which  we  have  fellowship  with  the  aims  of 
the  Creator  and  build  up  about  us  our  part  of 
a  righteous  world.  Thus  His  holiness  and  His 
love  can  bring  us  into  His  communion.  He  is 
separate  from  sinners  not  because  His  conduct 
of  life  is  carried  out  upon  different  moral 
principles  and  standards  from  those  which 
they  must  obey;  but  because,  the  standards 
being  the  same,  we  have  failed  of  that  identical 
righteousness  which  is  righteousness  for  Him. 
But  this  separation  brings  us  infinitely  nearer 
God  than  anything  else  could  have  done.  The 
bonds  of  common  sin  seem  to  unite  men  for  a 
time  but  they  ultimately  separate  them  beyond 
all  reunion.  The  bonds  of  a  common  stand- 
ard, while  they  separate  God  and  man  by  the 
most  tragic  gulf  that  can  be  found  in  the  uni- 
verse, yet  have  in  them  the  promise  of  a  pos- 
sible ultimate  reunion  in  which  our  fellowship 
with  Him  will  be  made  perfect.  For  there  is 
no  such  fellowship  in  all  the  world  as  that  of 
forgiveness.     The  loneliness  of  the  ghastly 


108        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

discovery  that  sin  is  vain  because  God  is  good, 
and  the  impossibility  of  solving  such  a  prob- 
lem by  any  ritual  performance  or  sacrificial 
act,  lead  the  soul  towards  the  wonder  of  for- 
giveness, the  infinite  comfort  of  reestablished 
communion  with  the  good  God,  and  the  eter- 
nal confidence  and  trust  which  that  restora- 
tion brings,  just  because  we  have  fellowship 
with  Him  in  conscience  as  well  as  in  grace. 
In  all  their  affliction  He  was  afflicted — most 
of  all  in  the  grievous  affliction  of  their  sin. 

Out  of  all  this  there  comes  to  each  of  us  the 
rousing  question  of  a  very  daring  message. 
Do  not  complacently  content  yourself  with 
your  traditional  God,  but  before  all  else  in  re- 
ligion purify  your  thought  of  Him.  Never  for 
a  moment  allow  yourself  to  think  of  Him 
either  harshly  or  diplomatically.  Lay  hold 
upon  Him  not  only  with  your  weakness  but 
with  your  strength:  with  your  best  of  con- 
science as  well  as  with  your  worst  of  shame. 
Revise  also  your  theology.  Cast  out  of  it, 
even  out  of  its  most  sacred  traditions  of  the 
conduct  and  mind  of  God,  all  that  is  not  good. 
Revise  each  doctrine  separately  and  refuse  to 
subscribe  to  any,  upon  whatsoever  sanctions 
or  under  whatsoever  plea,  that  does  not  satisfy 
your  own  conscience  as  to  its  rectitude.  The 
God  of  many  excellent  people  is  not  only  not 


THE  CHARACTER  OF  GOD  109 

good,  He  is  not  even  sane  or  decent.  You 
will  make  little  headway  in  the  religious  life 
until  you  can  trust  your  God.  And  this  revisal 
must  necessarily  go  farther,  and  lead  to  a  re- 
vising of  ethics  also.  Our  consciences  are  so 
accustomed  to  bow  in  the  house  of  Rimmon 
that  it  will  take  years  for  most  of  us  to  cleanse 
them  of  their  moral  prejudices  and  set  them 
free  from  those  little  trifling  proprieties  which 
are  so  tyrannical  over  men.  Each  detail  that 
affects  the  conscience  ought  to  be  taken  out 
and  held  in  the  clear  light  of  God  until  the  con- 
ception of  righteousness  has  ceased  to  be  a 
matter  of  conventional  proprieties,  and  is  seen 
on  large  scale  in  some  such  massive  reality  as 
to  satisfy  your  noblest  aspirations.  The 
righteousness  of  many  is  but  a  wide  field  full 
of  mole-hills,  but  the  righteousness  to  which 
God  calls  us  is  indeed  like  the  great  mountains. 
Then,  when  these  corrections  have  been  made, 
a  man  comes  to  know  that  there  is  an  eternal 
backing  for  all  his  best  endeavours,  and  finds 
in  the  character  of  God  the  last  refuge  and 
citadel  for  his  faith. 

Thus  it  is  from  within  the  soul  that  we 
reach  the  great  persuasion  that  God  is  good. 
In  the  world  of  external  experience  we  are 
constantly  meeting  with  the  tragic  problems  of 
Providence,  and  they  bear  us  no  such  message 


IIO        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF   FAITH 

whatsoever.  From  the  providential  order  of 
the  world  there  must  be  found  this  escape. 
We  shall  never  be  able  to  reconcile  the  con- 
scienceless and  non-moral  sweep  of  things  in 
which  we  are  carried  onwards  down  the  years 
with  our  persuasion  of  God's  goodness  and 
His  love.  From  providential  experience  we 
must  appeal,  and  escape  into  that  deeper  moral 
order  whose  evidence  and  certificate  lies  in  the 
moral  persuasions  of  the  spirit  of  man.  From 
that  moral  order,  thank  God,  there  is  no  es- 
cape. All  that  is  within  us  reveals  a  God  ter- 
rible in  holiness,  absolutely  just,  abundant  in 
mercy.  The  world  may  be  crazy  and  upside 
down,  but  God  is  good.  I  personally  am  lost 
and  all  bewildered  and  abroad,  but  God  is 
good.  My  heart  is  broken  or  my  heart  is 
frozen,  but  God  is  good.  I  have  destroyed  my- 
self, but  God  is  good. 


LECTURE  IV 
THE  INCARNATE  LOVE 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  INCARNATE  LOVE 

The  word  is  nigh,  even  in  thy  mouth  and  in  thy 
heart. — Romans  io:8. 

The  word  was  made  flesh. — John  i  :  14. 

BEFORE  the  coming  of  Jesus  Christ 
God  had  been  revealing  Himself  to 
man  through  all  the  ages  with  a  reve- 
lation which  slowly  but  steadily  grew  clearer. 
We  are  accustomed  to  this  thought  in  connec- 
tion with  the  divine  revelation  made  in  the 
Old  Testament.  The  point  which  I  would  like 
now  to  emphasize  is  that  all  that  revelation 
was  made  within  the  souls  of  inspired  men, 
and  that  the  record  of  the  Bible  is  really  a 
record  of  spiritual  experience  rather  than  of 
externally  given  dogma.  God  never  could  be 
seen  by  man  except  as  He  revealed  Himself 
within  the  soul  of  man.  The  lawgivers,  the 
psalmists  and  the  prophets  received  God 
within  their  souls,  passed  through  amazing 
spiritual  experiences,  and  sent  the  record  of 

"3 


114        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

these  down  in  the  written  word.  Thus, 
in  a  sense,  the  word  had  become  flesh 
from  the  beginning  of  things.  In  every  in- 
spired man  some  word  of  God  was  incarnate. 
Dr.  Peabody  in  a  very  remarkable  note  upon 
the  text,  The  word  was  made  flesh,  helps  us 
to  realize  that,  in  every  man  who  is  impressed 
by  religious  truth  and  who  carries  that  truth 
out  into  character  and  outward  life,  that  great 
principle  of  incarnation  is  fulfilled.1  In  all 
such  translation  of  spiritual  experience  into 
conviction  and  character  there  is  a  hint  that 
whatever  God  may  choose  to  reveal  of  Him- 
self will  probably  come  to  man  by  way  of  in- 
carnation. 

In  the  world  outside  of  Palestine  the  same 
thing  had  been  going  on,  although  in  a  much 
dimmer  and  less  perfect  fashion.  Every  na- 
tion had  had  its  own  ideas  of  God,  and  in 
many  nations  the  historian  notes  a  definite 
advance  in  these.  Beyond  all  other  nations  of 
the  western  world  this  is  true  of  Greece.  By 
her,  God  had  been  discovered  as  the  great  and 
constant  counterpart  to  life,  the  necessary 
supplement  without  which  no  knowledge  of 
ours  can  be  intelligible.  We  have  already  seen 
how  the  discovery  had  been  marred  by  the  two 
great  enemies  of  faith, — on  the  one  hand  the 

1  Sunday  Mornings  in  the  College  Chapel. 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  115 

tendency  to  anthropomorphism,  and  on  the 
other  hand  the  crude  and  quite  unethical  facts 
of  Providence.  In  regard  to  these  we  took  the 
position  that  it  was  the  latter  which  most  of 
all  distorted  man's  conception  of  God;  while 
the  former,  although  it  may  be  responsible  for 
the  attribution  of  certain  human  frailties  to 
the  Divine,  yet,  on  the  whole,  tended  towards 
real  knowledge  of  God  and  approach  to  Him. 
Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  anthropo- 
morphism did  sometimes  mislead  men.  To 
guard  against  its  danger  there  was  a  tendency 
among  thinkers,  both  in  Israel  and  outside  of 
it,  to  go  to  the  opposite  extreme,  disclaiming 
all  similarity  between  divine  and  human  na- 
ture, and  separating  God  completely  from 
man.  In  such  a  question  as  that  of  miracles 
we  can  see  this  tendency  working.  It  has 
often  puzzled  Christian  people  to  understand 
why  the  Pharisees  were  not  satisfied  with  such 
miracles  as  Christ  did,  but  were  perpetually 
demanding  from  Him  what  He  called  signs 
and  wonders.  The  explanation  seems  to  be 
that  in  His  miracles  He  was  too  kindly,  too 
familiar,  understanding  and  human.  Such 
miracles  as  these,  which  were  exactly  the 
things  which  our  human  hearts  would  have 
prompted  us  to  do  for  those  whom  we  love, 
if  we  had  had  the  power,  never  satisfied  the 


116        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

Pharisees  just  because  they  were  so  much  in 
the  line  of  human  desire.  The  signs  and  won- 
ders which  would  have  pleased  them  were  evi- 
dently things  which  had  no  human  nature  in 
them  at  all.  A  leap  from  the  temple  pinnacle, 
a  miraculous  descent  from  the  cross,  or  some 
startling  disarrangement  of  astronomical  or 
other  laws  of  nature — these  were  what  they 
wanted.  This  may  have  been  a  perverted  re- 
sult of  their  fear  of  anthropomorphic  views 
of  God,  which  they  would  have  associated 
with  idolatry.  As  a  matter  of  fact  they  fell 
into  a  far  greater  danger  of  idolatry  by  empty- 
ing God  of  human  attributes  and  worship- 
ping an  unhuman  conception.  There  can  be 
little  question  that  the  third  temptation  of 
Jesus  represents  a  suggestion  that  He  might 
conduct  His  ministry  more  effectively  by  yield- 
ing to  this  desire  on  the  part  of  Jewish  re- 
ligious leaders,  and  might  exchange  His  deeds 
of  human  kindness  for  others  simply  astonish- 
ing, in  which  there  was  no  manifestation  of 
sympathy  or  of  love  for  man. 

The  incarnation  of  God  in  Jesus  is  in  itself 
an  answer  to  all  earth's  deepest  questions.  It 
is  the  final  verdict  which  decides  the  question 
of  the  relation  between  God  and  man.  It  has 
been  supposed  by  the  Pharisaic  party  of  all 
nations  and  times  to  involve  a  limitation,  a 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  117 

humanizing  of  Cod  which  made  Him  less  di- 
vine. Christ's  contention  was  that  that  limita- 
tion and  humanizing,  instead  of  being  a  de- 
fect, was  really  a  tremendous  power.  He  held 
and  taught  that  God  was  not  less  God  for  ap- 
pearing in  the  form  of  a  man,  and  that  there 
was  nothing  essentially  unnatural  in  the  incar- 
nation. The  proof  of  the  divinity  used  to  be 
sought  in  making  God  as  unlike  to  man  as 
possible.  Christ  insists  that  man's  conception 
of  God  cannot  be  too  human,  and  that  the 
word  divine  is  not  the  equivalent  of  unhuman. 
At  the  period  when  the  fourth  gospel  was 
written  there  was  one  of  those  great  and  sig- 
nificant confluences  of  various  streams  of 
thought  which  have  always  marked  an  ad- 
vance in  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  life  of 
the  world.  The  Greek  and  the  Hebrew 
streams  then  met  as  they  had  never  done  be- 
fore. All  the  world  was  out  for  a  fuller 
knowledge  of  God,  and  was  seeking  in  one 
way  or  another  for  a  real  approach,  in  which 
man  would  find  God  nearer  to  human  nature 
than  He  had  been  conceived  to  be.  Plato  had 
found  God  along  the  lines  of  human  intellect 
and  thought,  and  in  this  way  had  established  a 
real  connection  between  the  human  and  the  di- 
vine. Still  that  connection  left  man  very  wist- 
ful.    The  eternal  ideas  dwelt  in  heaven,  and 


Il8        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

man's  thoughts  were  but  the  shadows  and  re- 
flections of  these.  The  brilliant  metaphor  of 
the  cave  is  one  of  the  abiding  masterpieces  of 
philosophic  insight.  Man,  lying  on  his  back 
within  the  cave,  across  whose  mouth  ran  a 
low  wall,  could  not  see  the  procession  that 
passed  the  entrance.  But,  looking  upwards 
from  the  floor  of  the  cave,  he  could  see  the 
movement  of  dim  forms  which  were  the 
shadows  cast  upon  the  cave's  roof,  as  the  pro- 
cession passed.  This  was  all  that  he  could 
share  of  the  divine  ideas.  It  was  much  but  it 
was  not  enough.  It  linked  on  human  life  with 
the  divine  through  the  medium  of  thought, 
and  taught  man  to  think  magnificently  of  his 
own  thinking. 

Yet  there  was  no  real  sympathetic  contact 
between  God  and  man.  The  two  had  not 
really  met.  One  sees  the  same  defect  in  the 
splendid  conception  of  Apollo  and  his  worship 
and  his  oracles  of  Delphi  and  of  Delos.  In  a 
very  remarkable  study  of  this  subject  pub- 
lished a  few  years  ago  by  Wilamowitz  the  fol- 
lowing passages  occur: — "Know  thyself — by 
which  was  meant  Know  that  thou  art  a  mortal 
man,  and  know  it  here,  face  to  face  with  my 
eternal  and  divine  majesty."  "  The  cult  of 
Apollo  renounces  the  whole  domain  of  mysti- 
cism, for  its  god  has  no  direct  communion  with 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  119 

humanity.  It  renounces  that  disburdening  of 
the  soul  which  takes  place  in  all  forms  of 
ecstasy  when  man  passes  beyond  himself. 
And  therewith,  to  a  great  extent,  it  also  re- 
nounces hope."  In  the  Alkestis  it  will  be  re- 
membered that  Apollo  cannot  remain  in  the 
house  of  his  friend  and  host  Admetos  when 
death  has  visited  the  mansion.  To  escape  de- 
filement he  disappears.  He  had  been  a 
friendly  and  a  welcome  presence  there,  but 
when  life  reached  its  point  of  greatest  need, 
his  immortality  separated  him  from  mortals 
and  he  failed  them.  Instead  of  him  comes 
Herakles,  half  god  and  half  man.  He  has  no 
scruples  about  defilement,  but  wrestles  with 
death  and  brings  back  Alkestis  to  the  sunshine. 
In  this  we  see  the  Greek  desire  of  man's  soul 
for  communion  with  his  God,  the  baffling  ne- 
cessity which  must  forever  separate  the  human 
from  the  divine,  and  the  pathetic  expedient  of 
bridging  that  gulf  by  the  creation  of  demi- 
gods. Similarly,  we  have  the  stories  of  ^Escu- 
lapius,  and  the  famous  inscription  upon  the 
cupola  of  one  of  his  temples,  "  Being  come  to 
this  place  the  Son  of  God  loved  it  exceed- 
ingly/' This  goes  far  in  its  approach  to  the 
idea  of  the  incarnation,  and  it  will  be  noticed 
that  both  with  Herakles  ?nd  with  ^Esculapius 
it  is  for  the  sake  of  restoring  mortals  from 


120       THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

sickness  to  health  and  from  death  to  life 
that  the  approach  is  made,  thus  anticipating 
in  a  very  striking  manner  the  ministry  of 
Jesus. 

Yet  all  these  legends  were  dealing  with  a 
thing  which  obviously  they  did  not  under- 
stand. The  cult  of  Herakles  or  of  ^Esculapius 
can  hardly  be  called  a  faith.  Their  incarna- 
tion was  a  mystery  rather  than  an  active  be- 
lief. It  was  the  beautiful  and  dreamy  reflex 
of  man's  desires,  in  the  heart  of  which  there 
lay  a  certain  hope  that  these  desires  might 
prove  to  be  the  shadowy  revelations  of  the 
truth  that  man  was  nearer  to  his  God  than  he 
had  dared  to  think.  They  may  be  called  in- 
carnation without  faith.  And  after  all,  the 
Greek  demi-gods  and  even  the  gods  themselves 
had  been  men  to  begin  with,  and  had  little  in 
common  with  the  speculations  of  the  philoso- 
phers concerning  the  divine.  The  result  of  it 
all  was  this,  that  the  mysterious  deity  lay  on 
his  couch  of  stars  thinking  his  wondrous 
thoughts,  while  far  down  the  gulf  this  little 
world  of  mortals  lived  in  the  twilight  of  these 
thoughts  of  God. 

In  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  the  most  charac- 
teristic feature  is  the  wonderful  nearness  of 
God  and  man.  From  the  earliest  days  God 
walks  with  man  and  speaks  to  him  in  the  most 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  121 

friendly  and  understanding  fashion.  Abra- 
ham is  the  friend  of  God.  Moses  receives 
overwhelming  assurances  of  the  abundance  of 
His  mercy  and  truth  and  goodness  which  have 
become  classics  of  religious  consolation.  The 
prophets  recall  man  from  the  distance  to  which 
his  sins  have  driven  him,  to  a  God  nigh  at 
hand  and  longing  for  man's  love.  Yet  for  a 
long  time  these  oracles  had  been  dumb,  and  the 
Jewish  religion  as  it  was  in  the  time  of  Christ 
had  got  separated  very  far  from  its  God. 
Jehovah  still  stood  supreme  over  Israel,  but 
He  was  the  austere  Lord  of  righteousness  and 
command,  Who  had  lost  all  the  human  tender- 
ness of  the  God  of  Amos  and  Hosea,  and 
Whose  dealing  with  man  might  be  most  justly 
conceived  as  that  of  one  sitting  upon  a  judg- 
ment seat  and  watching  the  procession  of 
mortals  trooping  past  for  doom. 

At  this  time  a  new  philosophy  was  arising, 
associated  chiefly  with  the  name  of  Philo  the 
Jew,  and  it  arose  out  of  the  need  that  was  felt 
by  Jews  and  Greeks  alike  for  getting  God  and 
man  nearer  to  one  another.  It  took  up  into  its 
capacious  spirit  the  Old  Testament  literature 
and  the  Platonic  philosophy  and  made  a  blend 
of  them.  It  conceived  of  wisdom  in  various 
ways.  Sometimes  it  was  personified,  and  a 
wonderful    romance    was    woven    about    its 


122        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

career.  At  other  times  it  was  dreamy  and  in- 
distinct, rather  an  attribute  than  a  person. 
Now  it  was  a  mere  quality  in  man  and  God: 
then  it  was  a  soul,  in  itself  more  or  less  divine. 
Even  this  suggestion  of  a  unity  between  the 
human  and  the  divine  brought  the  wistfulness 
of  the  world  flocking  to  its  teaching  in  the  de- 
sire to  get  nearer  to  its  God.  Zoroastrians 
contributed  to  it  their  lore  of  angels  and  of 
devils.  From  the  Far  East  Buddhism,  with 
its  sense  of  the  infinite  separation  between 
God  and  the  world,  suggested  the  necessity  for 
a  mediating  power  of  some  sort.  At  last  the 
system  took  romantic  shape  in  the  tale  of  the 
seons.  These,  representing  the  various  human 
powers  of  mind  and  soul,  came  trooping  out 
from  God.  Human  wisdom,  the  last  thing 
that  wandered  forth  from  the  Father,  got  so 
far  away  from  Him  as  to  lose  hold,  and  seek- 
ing to  leap  back  into  His  bosom  fell  down  the 
unfathomable  abyss  and  became  the  light  of 
the  world's  dim  knowledge.  It  is  easy  to 
smile  at  all  this  and  to  call  it  a  grotesque  pic- 
ture of  master-truths  of  life,  but  it  would  be 
well  to  remember  that  "  sense  of  tears  in 
mortal  things  "  to  which  Euripides  had  given 
such  wonderful  expression,  that  cry  of  man 
for  some  approach  of  God  which  was  heard 
in  every  land. 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  1 23 

Into  this  world  at  some  stage  or  other  there 
fell  the  marvellous  words,  The  word  zvas  made 
flesh.  It  was  a  revolutionary  and  also  a  fulfill- 
ing word.  It  shattered  forever  the  sorrow  of 
the  ancient  world  and  made  its  hope  articu- 
late. It  accepted  the  fact  that  all  that  any  one 
can  know  of  God  must  be  known  within  his 
own  soul;  and  it  interpreted  that  fact,  not  by 
any  fantastic  story  of  aeons,  but  by  the  record 
of  a  life  which  was  known  to  be  indisputable 
historic  fact.  The  only  way  in  which  any  so- 
lution for  the  mystery  could  be  found  was  in- 
carnation, and  in  Jesus  Christ  that  incarnation 
took  place. 

The  doctrine  of  the  incarnation  and  the 
great  words,  The  zvord  was  made  flesh,  have 
presented  apparently  insuperable  difficulties  to 
many  minds.  The  author  of  Ecce  Homo  has 
said,  "  The  zvord  zvas  made  flesh.  Present  the 
saying  to  an  ordinary  man,  and  if  he  answered 
the  truth  he  would  say  that  he  did  not  under- 
stand it.  He  will  answer  that  he  believes  it, 
by  which  he  means  that  as  the  words  make  no 
impression  whatever  upon  his  mind,  so  they 
excite  no  opposition  in  it.  Present  the  same 
word  to  a  thinker.  It  will  overwhelm  him 
with  difficulty.  He  will  sigh,  and  you  will 
hear  him  murmur  that  it  is  a  great  saying,  but 
he  fears  he  shall  never  believe  it"     These 


124        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

words  are  weighty  and  they  are  very  impress- 
ive. It  is  perhaps  presumptuous  to  challenge 
them,  for  they  will  be  admitted  by  a  very  large 
number  of  grave  and  earnest  men  in  our  gene- 
ration. Yet  one  cannot  but  remember  that 
very  many  thinkers  at  the  time  when  the  text 
was  first  spoken  must  have  found  in  them  no 
new  thing  difficult  of  belief,  but  a  solution  of 
the  whole  effort  of  the  thought  of  the  ancient 
world.  The  Hebrew  insisted  that  God  had 
made  man  in  His  own  image,  by  which  pre- 
sumably he  meant  that  man  is  capable  of  re- 
ceiving and  expressing  God  in  his  human  na- 
ture. The  Greek  admitted  that  all  possible 
discovery  of  God  must  be  within  the  soul,  and 
all  that  had  ever  been  known  of  God  was  in- 
deed a  word  manifest  in  the  flesh.  Both  He- 
brew and  Greek  would  have  shrunk  back  from 
a  God  that  was  not  similar  to  man,  with  a 
horror  which  no  other  conception  could  have 
produced.  There  is  nothing  conceivable  so 
hideous  as  the  idea  of  man  finding  himself  in 
the  power  of  a  being  essentially  different  from 
himself.  Swift,1  in  his  rough  way,  set  us 
shuddering  at  the  bare  imagination  of  a  race 
of  horses  having  domination  over  human  spir- 
its, and  that  is  but  a  suggestion  of  the  hide- 
ousness  of  any  kind  of  God  who  is  incapable 
1  Gulliver's  Travels. 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  1 25 

of  being  manifest  in  the  flesh.  The  flesh  was 
weak  and  its  medium  very  obscuring,  and  in 
consequence  of  this  the  word  thus  manifest 
was  very  partially  intelligible,  either  to  the 
Hebrew  or  to  the  Greek.  Yet  the  dominant 
conception  of  the  revelation  of  God  in  the 
flesh  had  set  the  lines  for  all  possible  revela- 
tion. The  Word  must  become  flesh  in  some 
fuller  and  completer  form  than  man  had  ever 
known.  The  incarnation  was  the  one  and  only 
way  of  God's  manifestation  to  man  which  was 
to  be  expected  upon  the  earth.  From  the  be- 
ginning God  had  been  the  true  light  that,  com- 
ing into  the  world,  lighteth  every  man.  Noth- 
ing could  have  been  more  probable,  and  noth- 
ing more  obviously  fitting  when  it  was  mani- 
fest, than  that  One  should  come  at  last  saying, 
I  am  the  light  of  the  zvorld. 

All  that  has  been  said  so  far  has  been  an 
attempt  to  show  the  relation  between  the  main 
thesis  of  these  lectures,  namely  the  inwardness 
of  the  ultimate  foundations  of  faith,  and  the 
external  historic  fact  of  the  revelation  of  God 
in  Jesus  Christ.  There  was  something  in 
common  between  man  and  God  which  made  it 
natural  that  when  He  chose  to  reveal  Himself 
fully  to  man  it  should  be  in  a  human  life 
rather  than  in  external  oracles  of  any  sort.  It 
remains  for  us  to  illustrate  this  thesis  by  ap- 


126        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

plying  its  principle  to  the  three  great  doc- 
trines of  incarnation,  atonement,  and  resur- 
rection. 

1.  The  Incarnation.  The  soul  may  be  re- 
garded in  the  first  place  as  the  seat  of  con- 
sciousness and  thought.  If  man  is  to  find  God 
within  himself,  a  certain  amount  of  that  dis- 
covery will  be  made  along  purely  intellectual 
lines.  As  his  mind  exercises  itself  in  knowl- 
edge he  will  find  himself  in  contact  with  the 
eternal  thoughts,  while  he  is  thinking  his  own. 
Much  of  our  knowledge  consists  of  memories 
of  our  past  experience  and  other  purely  per- 
sonal details,  as  well  as  of  our  consciousness 
of  things  and  events  external  to  us  and  our 
judgments  concerning  these.  It  is  true  that 
even  upon  such  matters  there  falls  at  times  a 
mysterious  light  which  takes  them  into  a 
higher  region  and  reveals  God  in  the  incidents 
of  our  every-day  life.  But  besides  such  di- 
vine interpretations  of  common  things,  there 
is  more.  We  are  visited  by  "  thoughts  sub- 
lime that  pierce  the  night  like  stars,"  and  in 
our  thinking  upon  spiritual  things  we  find 
ourselves  in  a  region  which,  in  the  famous 
words  of  Euripides,  is  "  divine  or  human  or 
both  mixed."  It  was  this  consciousness  of  a 
divine  element  mingling  with  common  knowl- 
edge that  suggested  the  Daemon  of  Socrates, 


THE  INCARNATE   LOVE  127 

and  there  never  was  a  more  impressive  sug- 
gestion than  that.  There  are  times  when  even 
the  most  commonplace  mind  is  smitten  with  a 
light  which  awes,  and  sometimes  terrifies  it, 
and  a  voice  comes  out  of  the  fire  saying, 
Put  off  thy  shoes  from  off  thy  feet;  for  the 
place  whereon  thou  standest  is  holy  ground. 
The  more  loftily  we  think,  the  more  certain 
we  are  that  it  is  not  only  we  but  God  thinking 
in  us. 

When  men  are  framing  ideals  for  humanity 
or  seeking  to  plan  their  own  lives  upon  the 
highest  plane,  they  are  (and  the  wisest  of 
them  know  that  they  are)  thinking  over  again 
thoughts  of  God.  Whenever  thought  rises  to 
any  exaltation  it  discloses  its  secret,  and  men 
know  that  they  are  in  contact  with  that  from 
which  it  sprang,  its  eternal  fountains  in  the 
mind  that  governs  the  universe.  It  follows 
from  all  this  that  we  should  expect  the  full 
revelation  of  God  not  to  be  a  revelation  of 
alien  truth  or  beauty  or  goodness,  but  some- 
thing essentially  intelligible  to  man's  intellect, 
and  somehow  familiar  to  all  who  had  realized 
the  divine  meaning  and  presence  in  their  own 
thinking.  The  revelation  of  God  within  the 
mind  of  man  will  be  a  revelation  of  the  same 
nature  as  his  own  intellectual  persuasions,  but 
different  from  these  in  its  perfect  clearness, 


128        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

its  sure  confirmation,  and  its  established  per- 
manence. 

It  is  along  such  lines  that  we  can  best  un- 
derstand the  meaning  of  the  incarnation  of 
Jesus  Christ.  The  clue  to  it  lies  within  our 
own  souls.  There  is  indeed  infinitely  more 
there  than  there  ever  has  been  or  will  be  in 
mere  mortal  man;  but  unless  it  were  intelli- 
gible to  him  along  the  lines  of  his  own  think- 
ing it  would  have  no  point  of  contact  with  him, 
and  would  be  entirely  useless  for  the  purposes 
of  faith.  This  contact  is  precisely  the  thing 
which  Christ  accomplished. 

Much  has  been  said  in  recent  years  of  the 
originality  of  Christ's  teaching,  and  much  of 
that  has  great  interest  and  value.  Mr.  Lecky 
has  expressed  this  view  admirably:  "  Nothing 
can,  as  I  conceive,  be  more  erroneous  or  su- 
perficial than  the  reasonings  of  those  who 
maintain  that  the  moral  element  of  Christian- 
ity has  in  it  nothing  distinctive  or  peculiar. 
The  method  of  this  school,  of  which  Boling- 
broke  may  be  regarded  as  the  type,  is  to  col- 
lect from  the  writings  of  different  heathen 
writers  certain  isolated  passages  embodying 
precepts  that  were  inculcated  by  Christianity; 
and  when  the  collection  had  become  very 
large,  the  task  was  supposed  to  be  accom- 
plished.    But  the  true  originality  of  a  system 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  1 29 

of  moral  teaching  depends  not  so  much  upon 
the  elements  of  which  it  is  composed,  as  upon 
the  manner  in  which  they  are  fused  into  a 
symmetrical  whole,  upon  the  proportionate 
value  that  is  attached  to  different  qualities,  or, 
to  state  the  same  thing  by  a  single  word,  upon 
the  type  of  character  that  is  formed.  Now  it 
is  quite  certain  that  the  Christian  type  differs 
not  only  in  degree,  but  in  kind,  from  the  Pa- 
gan one." 

Yet  one  must  be  very  guarded  in  pursuing 
this  line  of  argument.  Suppose  we  were  able 
to  separate  the  teachings  of  Jesus  from  all 
that  had  been  said  before,  that  would  be  rather 
an  added  difficulty  than  an  aid  to  faith.  It 
would  lead  us  to  view  the  Christian  religion 
as  a  new  religion  rivalling  the  others  by  the 
claim  it  makes  to  new  discoveries  and  revela- 
tions of  truth.  Thus  it  would  tend  to  an  esti- 
mate of  Christianity  as  but  another  religion 
among  the  many  that  had  already  existed: 
doubtless  the  best  and  most  advanced  of  them 
all,  yet  somehow  to  be  judged  as  upon  their 
level.  But  Christianity  is  not  a  rival  religion, 
either  to  Judaism  or  to  Buddhism  or  to  any 
other.  Christianity  is  the  religion  of  the 
world,  the  only  religion.  It  takes  up  into  it- 
self all  that  is  true  in  all  the  other  revelations 
of  God  to  man.     It  does  not  boast  that  it  is 


I30        THE  FOUNDATIONS   OF  FAITH 

better  than  these,  nor  even  fuller.  It  professes 
to  be  God  manifest  in  the  flesh,  and  proclaims 
that,  in  this  manifestation,  everything  that 
God  has  allowed  man  to  discover  concerning 
himself  in  any  faith,  is  not  only  included  but 
is  fully  and  finally  interpreted. 

Thus  it  would  seem  that  the  splendour  of 
Christ's  revelation  is  really  its  non-originality. 
It  is  because  in  it  one  finds  all  that  any  man 
had  ever  found  of  God  that  we  profess  to  be- 
lieve that  Jesus  is  in  a  quite  unique  sense  the 
way  and  the  truth;  taking  up  into  Himself, 
glorifying  and  confirming,  all  true  thoughts 
of  God  which  it  has  ever  entered  the  mind  of 
man  to  conceive.  The  enemies  of  Christianity 
have  often  thought  that  they  had  done  it  an 
injury  by  offering  quotations  from  the  words 
of  Buddha  or  Confucius  or  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  pointing  out  that  in  sayings  cor- 
responding to  these  Jesus  was  not  original. 
The  answer  has  too  often  been  an  attempt  to 
show  that  these  quotations  did  not  mean  what 
Jesus  meant,  and  to  discredit  or  belittle  their 
value.  I  would  suggest  that  the  real  answer  to 
any  such  charges  is  to  admit  them  all  and 
glory  in  them.  It  is  surely  unnecessary  to 
deny  that  these  other  teachers  may  have  dis- 
covered or  had  revealed  to  them  many  truths 
concerning  God  and  human  life,  and  the  more 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  131 

of  these  that  we  can  find,  the  better  for  our 
faith  in  Christ.  It  is  fantastic  to  imagine  that 
He  borrowed  His  sayings  from  sources  such 
as  these,  but  the  fact  that  in  His  teaching  He 
embodied  all  the  truth  of  the  ancient  world, 
along  with  the  new  revelations  which  He 
made,  surely  adds  to  the  completeness  of  our 
conception  that  in  Him  we  have  indeed  the 
word  made  flesh. 

The  thought  of  Jesus  penetrated  to  God 
continually,  and  gave  to  His  disciples  daily 
the  solution  of  the  world's  deepest  problems 
and  darkest  questions.  He  who  studies  the 
thoughts  and  words  of  Jesus  will  find  upon 
any  subject  the  mind  of  God. 

"  The  acknowledgment  of  God  in  Christ, 
Accepted  by  thy  reason,  solves  for  thee 
All  questions  in  the  earth  and  out  of  it." 

This  was  plainly  the  sense  in  which  Jesus  un- 
derstood His  own  teaching  and  personality. 
He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  Father, 
was  His  own  saying,  and  that  involves  not 
merely  a  vision  once  seen  and  then  passed 
away  from.  It  involves  a  change  upon  all  fu- 
ture vision.  Henceforth,  in  the  light  of 
Christ,  man  will  see  the  Father  and  hear  Him 
.speak  in  the  exercise  of  his  own  intellect. 


132        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

2.  If,  however,  we  have  rightly  regarded 
man's  intellectual  processes  as  a  preparation 
for  the  perfect  revelation  of  the  truth  of  God 
in  the  human  mind  of  Jesus,  we  have  to  face  a 
further  problem  in  the  question  of  man's  con- 
science as  a  medium  of  revelation.  In  our 
lecture  upon  the  Character  of  God  we  had  an 
opportunity  of  seeing  how  deeply  the  matter 
of  ethics  enters  into  our  religious  life,  and 
how  it  determines  the  form  which  we  give  to 
the  fact  of  God.  Now  for  man  the  medium 
of  moral  faculty  is  conscience,  so  that  if  God 
chooses  to  make  final  revelation  of  Himself  to 
man  it  must  be  through  this  medium  also. 

Conscience  in  man,  although  absolutely 
necessary,  has  been  singularly  defective  as  an 
organ  of  revelation.  For  one  thing  it  has 
usually  been  post  eventum.  Its  highest  use  is 
to  warn  men  from  evil,  as  the  danger-signal  of 
the  soul.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  usually  re- 
mains silent,  or  very  mildly  protesting,  during 
the  period  of  temptation,  whose  glamour  is  left 
to  play  unchecked  upon  man's  spirit.  It  is 
only  after  sin  has  been  committed  that  con- 
science wakens  and  becomes  eloquent.  The 
utter  unfairness  of  the  way  in  which  con- 
science deals  with  men  is  certainly  one  of  the 
deepest  mysteries  of  Providence.  Looking 
back  upon  the  tragedy  of  sin,  men  feel  that 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  133 

tfiey  have  been  cheated  in  this  thing,  that  their 
conscience  has  neither  principles  nor  good 
sense  nor  even  manners.  They  feel  that  if  it 
had  spoken  before,  as  it  so  savagely  speaks 
afterwards,  they  had  been  saved  from  life's 
tragedies.  In  this  way  conscience  certainly 
distorts  the  image  of  God  and  plays  into  the 
hands  of  those  false  appearances  of  arbitrari- 
ness or  worse,  which  are  suggested  by  Provi- 
dence as  we  experience  it.  The  only  sem- 
blance of  escape  from  this  that  unaided  man 
has  ever  found  lies  in  pain.  Granted  that 
conscience  has  treated  us  unfairly,  at  least  its 
scourging  may  make  us  wise;  and  the  painful 
consequences  of  sins,  not  only  in  shame  and 
humiliation,  but  in  social  derangements  and 
even  physical  disaster,  seem  to  give  some  hope 
of  a  recovery.  It  is  a  very  vague  and  faint 
hope.  Too  often  does  its  light  fall  back  upon 
the  past  rather  than  forward  into  the  future, 
showing  us  the  foolishness  and  the  badness 
of  the  choices  we  have  made,  rather  than  the 
possibilities  of  better  things  along  the  future 
road.  Still,  in  this  dim  and  uncertain  way,  a 
hint  is  given  of  how  pain  may  possibly  work 
out  purity.  It  is  not  enough,  but  it  is  all  we 
have. 

!  It  was  natural  then  that,  in  the  full  revela- 
tion  of   God   to   man,    a  human   conscience 


134        THE  FOUNDATIONS   OF  FAITH 

should  be  exhibited,  working  in  all  that  per- 
fection which  every  conscience  lacked. 
Where  the  minds  of  men  were  dull  in  the  hour 
of  temptation  the  mind  of  Christ  was  pecul- 
iarly alert,  and  He  discerned  the  meaning  of 
His  temptations  with  an  insight  and  a  fore- 
sight which  utterly  baffled  them.  Where  the 
conscience  of  men  around  Him  was  drugged 
and  stupefied  by  conventionality  and  preju- 
dice, He  saw  clearly  to  the  innermost  fact  of 
things,  and  denounced  the  Pharisees  with  the 
scathing  power  of  light  shining  in  a  dark 
place.  All  through  His  life  we  see  the  spec- 
tacle of  sins  fleeing  before  Him,  revealed  and 
naked  in  their  sinfulness.  As  the  enemy  and 
pursuer  of  human  sins,  He  stands  unique 
among  the  teachers  of  all  time.  In  penitent 
hearts  upon  which  sin  has  wrought  its  cruel 
work,  there  is  forever  the  same  eager  cry  for 
forgiveness;  and  men  recognize  in  Him  a  re- 
lation to  conscience  which  enables  Him  not 
merely  to  disclose  the  ambushes  of  sin  and  to 
reveal  its  evil,  but  to  deal  with  its  victims  also, 
and  to  bring  back  to  them  beauty  for  the  ashes 
of  sin's  spent  fires.  Thus  He  boldly  ap- 
proached the  penitents  with  the  forgiveness  of 
their  sins.  He  was  not  perplexed  by  the  ques- 
tion angrily  asked  by  His  enemies — Who  can 
forgive  sins  bat  God  only?    He  was  conscious 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  135 

of  bearing  to  man  this  divine  gift:  The  Son 
of  Man  hath  pozver  on  earth  to  forgive  sins. 

Yet  all  this  in  His  life  was  obviously  pre- 
liminary. Enwrapped  in  mysteries  which 
none  of  us  can  penetrate,  and  on  which  it  is 
perhaps  idle  to  theorize,  lies  the  dread  climax 
of  Christ's  action  upon  the  moral  life  of  man. 
Even  in  his  own  experience  man  had  found 
that  the  one  hope  for  irrevocable  sin  was  pain. 
It  was  a  glimmer  of  light  as  from  afar,  until 
He,  not  content  with  revealing  the  nature  of 
sin  and  forgiveness  to  its  victim,  actually  and 
with  the  utmost  deliberation  proclaimed  Him- 
self as  One  who  bore  the  sin  of  the  world  and 
gave  His  life  a  ransom  for  many.  There  is  no 
need  to  speculate  as  to  the  precise  theological 
meaning  of  such  words.  From  all  such  specu- 
lations the  Gospels  direct  our  eyes  to  the  cross 
of  Calvary  and  to  the  explanations  of  that 
cross  which  Jesus  Himself  had  given.  There 
we  find  One  Who  is  at  once  just  and  the  justi- 
fler  of  them  that  believe  in  Him.  There  we 
find  sin  confronted  by  love  and  pain,  and  the 
result  is  not,  as  in  the  former  human  case,  a 
mere  suggestion  of  some  way  of  escape  from 
sin.  It  is  the  effective  and  victorious  end  of 
the  long  human  tragedy.  It  is  the  triumph  of 
righteousness  over  iniquity  and  of  conscience 
over  guilt.     Thus,  as  in  the  former  case  we 


136        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

saw  that  the  word  intellect  had  become  flesh 
in  Him,  so  here  we  find  that  the  word  right- 
eousness also  became  flesh. 

3.  Besides  the  intellectual  and  moral  ele- 
ments in  human  nature,  which  must  be  reck- 
oned with  when  we  speak  of  God  as  incarnate 
in  man's  flesh,  there  is  another  element, 
largely  emotional,  of  which  we  must  take  ac- 
count. No  experience  of  the  human  spirit  is 
more  wonderful  and  characteristic  than  its 
spring  of  gladness  and  its  sense  of  the  worth 
of  life.  In  spite  of  all  depressions,  this  spring 
breaks  forth  in  desert  places  continually,  and 
astonishes  the  spirit  of  man  with  its  refresh- 
ments. Every  birth  brings  it  to  the  mother- 
heart.  Every  springtime  awakens  forgotten 
gladness  and  vitality  in  the  young.  Every 
wayside  joy  and  natural  pleasure  comes,  not 
only  as  a  surprising  kindness  on  the  part  of 
nature,  but  somehow  also  as  a  revelation  of 
the  deepest  truth  of  things.  The  view  of  life 
that  we  have  in  such  experiences  is  the  most 
convincing  of  all  things  we  know.  Those  who 
do  not  feel  it  may  say  that  it  is  too  good  to  be 
true;  but  those  who  do  feel  it  know  in  the 
deep  souls  of  them  that  it  is  too  good  not  to 
be  true.  Just  as  the  loveless  and  the  cynical 
call  the  passion  of  lovers  insanity,  while  the 
lovers  themselves  know  that  no  one  is  ever 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  137 

sane  except  when  he  is  in  love,  this  indomi- 
table faith  in  life  is  an  indestructible  element 
in  human  nature.  It  has  survived  the  pessi- 
misms of  all  the  centuries,  and,  still  more 
amazing,  it  survives  the  sorrows  of  the  vast 
majority  of  human  spirits.  It  is  continually 
discouraged  and  baffled  by  the  actual  facts  of 
life.  We  fain  would  hope  in  its  shout  of  glad 
assurance,  but  we  are  neither  brave  enough 
nor  big  enough  to  carry  its  torch  erect  and 
steady  through  our  darkest  hours.  Yet,  how- 
ever much  we  have  failed  in  our  courageous 
faith  in  life,  it  has  not  altogether  failed  us. 
After  every  discouraging  hour  when  its  light 
seemed  wholly  quenched,  it  rises  again  and 
shines  upon  us  to  the  end. 

It  rises  again,  and  in  its  rising  we  have  that 
which  makes  us  understand  the  doctrine  of 
Christ's  resurrection.  The  resurrection  is  not 
to  be  regarded  as  an  isolated  miracle  which 
has  no  relation  to  human  experience  at  all,  ex- 
cept merely  as  a  promise  or  prophecy  of  a  fu- 
ture life  for  men  who  die.  It  is  the  fulfill- 
ment of  all  that  is  wholesomest  in  every  soul 
of  man.  When  He  rose  from  the  dead,  Christ 
was  literally  the  first  fruits  of  them  that  slept. 
The  triumph  of  life,  the  persistence  and  au- 
thority of  joy,  have  always  been  demanded  by 
the  human  spirit  as  things  so  obviously  char- 


I38        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

acteristic  of  normal  life  that  they  bear  their 
own  evidence  when  they  come  to  us.  Surely 
it  was  natural  that  in  any  revelation  of  the 
highest,  these  things  should  also  have  their 
place.  Their  place  is  here.  In  the  risen  Christ 
we  see  them  triumphing  over  death,  and  we 
understand  the  claim  and  the  demand  of  all 
bright  hours  upon  our  spirit  as  they  pass,  tell- 
ing us  that  this  is  the  life  indeed,  and  that  the 
shadows  are  but  futilities.  And  here  we  have 
not  merely  a  confirmation  of  our  own  bright- 
est and  most  hopeful  hours.  We  have  also  in 
epitome  the  whole  history  of  the  world.  Cal- 
vary and  then  resurrection,  these  are  God's 
method  in  the  history  of  nations  and  in  the 
souls  of  men. 

In  our  facile  and  luxurious  way,  we  ask  for 
our  lives  a  smooth  progress  from  which 
struggle  and  disappointment  shall  be  alto- 
gether omitted.  We  feel  aggrieved  at  the 
backward  swirls  of  history,  in  whose  reaction 
great  promises  seem  to  be  sucked  down,  and 
man's  faith  and  hope  in  the  destiny  of  his 
race  to  be  drowned.  Taking  the  resurrection 
as  the  culmination  of  the  death  we  find  that 
such  smooth  progress,  undisappointed  and  un- 
broken, is  God's  way  neither  with  His  world 
nor  with  its  individual  inhabitants.  From  the 
corn  of  wheat  that  must  fall  into  the  ground 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  1 39 

and  die,  up  to  the  very  life  of  the  Son  of  God 
Who  must  needs  journey  to  Jerusalem  and 
suffer  of  them  and  be  raised  again,  it  is  the 
same  story.  Thus  we  have  learned  God's 
method  of  leading  on  His  world,  and  that 
learning  fixes  our  hope  and  faith  into  the  solid 
facts  of  history,  and  confirms  all  that  belief  in 
life  and  acceptance  of  its  gladness  which  seem 
so  convincing  to  the  normal  soul  in  hours  of 
health  and  joy.  We  have  dreamed  these 
things,  but  our  dreams  come  true  when  we 
stand  with  Christ  in  Joseph's  garden  in  the 
morning  sunshine,  and  look  back  and  under- 
stand the  cross.  Here  then,  in  the  resurrection 
of  Jesus,  the  word  hope  is  made  flesh. 

The  word  became  flesh.  What  word  ?  The 
answer  must  be,  Every  word  of  God  that  had 
been  spoken  in  the  soul  of  man.  Three  such 
words  we  have  considered  to-day  under  the 
categories  of  thought,  righteousness,  and 
hope.  But  these  are  only  three  out  of  the  im- 
mense vocabulary  of  the  language  of  God  in 
human  nature,  and  the  story  of  Jesus  is  the 
fulfilling  of  them  all.  We  have  seen  things 
through  a  glass  darkly.  We  have  heard  words 
muffled  and  confused  with  the  roar  of  life. 
Here  we  see  them  with  open  face  and  we  hear 
them  ringing  clear  and  convincing.  Incarna- 
tion, atonement,  resurrection,  they  are  the  key 


140        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

to  all  our  experience.  They  are  the  very  epit- 
ome of  all  our  human  life.  Everything 
within  man  from  the  beginning  has  been  un- 
dergoing them,  misunderstanding  them,  hint- 
ing at  them,  crying  for  them.  So  far  from 
being  incredible  they  are  the  commonest  things 
in  the  world,  the  most  natural  and  inevitable. 
For  each  of  us  these  constitute  the  very  truth 
of  life  as  we  know  it.  Thus  everything  that 
is  within  us  points  towards  Christ  and  leads 
back  to  Christ.  Here  is  the  true  story  of  the 
Son  of  Man,  and,  in  His  lowly  fashion,  it  is 
the  true  story  of  every  son  of  man. 

The  word  became  flesh, — what  word? 
Love — for  all  the  other  words  are  summed  up 
in  that.  In  the  lecture  upon  the  Character  of 
God  we  strove  to  find  reasons  for  vindicating 
that  character  to  man,  but  they  were  reasons 
which  deal  almost  exclusively  with  the  quali- 
ties of  justice  and  of  righteousness.  Yet, 
after  all,  these  are  but  minor  parts  of  His 
character  and  He  is  more  than  they.  Our 
conscience  seeks  primarily  for  these  in  its  de- 
mand that  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  shall  do 
right.  But  all  that  is  within  us  seeks  for  an- 
other thing  in  Him,  of  which  we  have  not  yet 
heard.    It  has  been  nobly  said  that 

"  A  loving  worm  within  its  clod 
Is  diviner  than  a  loveless  God." 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  141 

Our  own  love  tells  us  this  in  the  same  convinc- 
ing fashion  as  our  belief  in  life  demands  for 
us  the  truth  of  the  resurrection.  All  that  we 
have  said  may  be  summed  up  in  this  one  word. 
It  is  the  discovery  that  there  is  no  loveless 
God.  God  is  love,  and  all  our  experience  is 
just  the  revelation  of  that  love.  This  is  the 
fundamental  fact  in  all  the  universe,  without 
which  all  faith  is  futile.  "  Those  have  been 
called  geniuses  and  God-sent  prophets  who 
once  again  go  back  to  the  beginning  and  pre- 
sent a  new  question  to  the  world.  The  new 
question  which  Jesus  presented  was  the  word 
directed  to  the  God  of  the  Jews:  Art  Thou 
truly  a  God  of  wrath,  and  is  the  world  truly 
miserable  only  because  Thy  curse  rests  upon  it  ? 
The  law  answers  Yes  to  this  question,  but  the 
whole  world  answers  a  thousand  times,  No. 
This  it  was  that  appeared  to  the  people  so  sur- 
prisingly new  and  comforting  in  His  preach- 
ing, the  new  word  to  Israel,  that  God  was  the 
loving  Father  of  man.,,  " 

For,  in  the  last  analysis,  we  discover  that 
love  is  not  only  the  most  superb  experience  of 
life,  but  that  it  is  in  a  sense  life  itself.  It  is 
the  underlying  principle  which  constitutes  all 
the  other  elements  of  life  when  they  are  real 
and  normal.  Thought  itself  is  no  dry  and 
*New  Testament  Times,  Hausrath. 


142        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

loveless  faculty.  All  constructive  thought  is 
that  kind  of  spiritual  artistry  which  is  impelled 
to  work  because  it  loves  the  ideas  it  creates. 
Conscience  has  been  supposed  to  be  the  age- 
long rival  of  affection,  and  righteousness  has 
been  contrasted  to  love  as  an  opposing  force. 
Yet  there  is  no  righteousness  which  is  com- 
plete or  effective  that  is  not  ultimately  com- 
posed of  and  inspired  by  love.  Loveless 
righteousness  is  not  righteousness  in  a  full  or 
comprehensive  sense.  In  all  love  that  is 
worthy  of  the  name  there  is  the  element  not 
merely  of  gratification  but  of  restraint,  and 
that  element  of  righteousness  which  acts  as  a 
restraining  force  to  the  impetuousness  of  de- 
sire is  an  integral  part  of  real  love.  Just  as 
love  without  righteousness  is  a  wild  and  un- 
stable thing  which  swiftly  runs  upon  suicide, 
so  righteousness  without  love  is  not  even 
righteousness.  Equity  it  may  be,  or  dead 
justice  insisting  upon  its  pound  of  flesh, 
but  these  are  low  forms  of  character 
which  need  the  enrichment  and  the  eleva- 
tion of  love  before  they  are  worthy  of 
the  name  of  righteousness.  Similarly  all 
true  hope  has  love  in  the  heart  of  it.  The 
happy  belief  in  life  that  claims  the  resurrec- 
tion as  so  wonderful  an  expression  of  human 
truth,  is  only  parodied  by  the  light-hearted 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  143 

and  shallow  optimism  which  is  a  matter  rather 
of  digestion  than  of  spirituality,  a  butterfly 
hopefulness  founded  upon  nothing.  Add, 
however,  to  this  bright  and  alluring  toy  of  the 
soul,  the  element  of  a  deep-seated  love,  and  in 
hope  you  have  but  love's  unconscious  grasp  of 
its  inheritance.  It  does  not  follow  that  be- 
cause we  cannot  help  hoping  for  something  we 
shall  get  it,  but  it  does  most  assuredly  follow 
that  no  real  love  in  the  universe  has  ever 
finally  failed  of  its  desire.  And  it  is  this  ele- 
ment of  love  in  hope  which  is  most  marked  in 
the  story  of  Christ's  resurrection.  It  was  only 
to  beloved  ones  that  He  appeared.  The  whole 
doctrine,  which  has  too  often  been  regarded  as 
an  exhibition  of  the  mere  power  of  God,  is  al- 
ways in  the  Scripture  narratives  expressed  in 
the  sweeter  and  deeper  terms  of  the  love  of 
God  made  manifest  even  in  death. 

All  these  are  the  work  of  love:  they  are  the 
ways  of  love.  When  these  were  seen  and 
heard  and  handled  in  the  human  life  of  Jesus, 
the  last  and  greatest  and  dearest  word  of  all 
the  universe,  the  word  love,  became  flesh. 
This  cannot  be  too  strongly  emphasized  nor 
too  often  repeated.  It  was  the  theme  of 
Dante's  Divina  Commedia.  It  is  the  perpet- 
ual and  ever-recurring  note  of  Robert  Brown- 
ing.   It  is  in  some  form  or  other  the  great  dis- 


144        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

covery  of  all  trustworthy  explorers  of  human 
nature.  In  every  scientist  and  student  the  pas- 
sion for  learning  is  but  an  austere  develop- 
ment of  love.  Without  love,  the  redemption 
of  sin,  and  the  belief  in  life  passing  on  to  a 
hope  of  immortality,  miss  their  most  essential 
and  vital  element.  It  is  this  which  is  the  crux 
of  the  modern  social  conscience.  When  that 
is  taken  up  by  the  loveless  as  a  mere  develop- 
ment of  science  to  be  prosecuted  by  such  tools 
as  tables  of  statistics,  it  is  one  of  the  most 
barren  and  unattractive  of  all  the  forms  of 
modern  life.  When  it  is  inspired  by  love,  its 
students  are  able  to  press  on  towards  further 
knowledge  of  its  truths,  and  to  build  up  out 
of  it  a  science  of  redemption  and  of  hope 
which  keeps  them  human  amidst  all  life's 
treachery,  and  indomitable  in  spite  of  its  con- 
stant failures  and  disappointments.  It  is  in 
view  of  this  fact  that  one  feels  so  strongly  the 
necessity  of  religion  to  successful  social  re- 
form. To  the  thoughtless,  the  modern  watch- 
words concerning  wages  and  housing  and 
votes  may  seem  twenty  centuries  removed 
from  the  old  stories  of  the  life,  death  and 
resurrection  of  Jesus.  Yet  unless  they  are  the 
perpetuation  of  these  ancient  stories,  and  un- 
less the  spirit  of  incarnation,  redemption,  and 
resurrection  lives  on  in  them,  they  wither  be- 


THE  INCARNATE  LOVE  145 

fore  their  time  and  fall  from  the  tree  of  hu- 
man development  as  shrivelled  leaves.  In  a 
word,  all  man's  experiences  are  in  some  form 
or  other  love's  adventures.  Dante  was  well 
advised  when  he  divided  even  sins  by  this 
category,  as  love  excessive,  love  defective,  and 
love  perverted.  Our  scientific  thinking,  the 
work  of  conscience,  and  the  upward  leap  or 
downward  drooping  of  the  spirit,  are  but 
love's  experiments,  its  blundering  attempts  at 
expression.  Thus  in  Jesus  Christ  we  find  the 
perfect  work  of  love.  In  that  light  we  see 
light  clearly  upon  every  part  of  our  earthly 
life;  for  He,  being  the  incarnate  love,  hath 
brought  life  as  well  as  immortality  to  light. 


LECTURE  V 
MEANS  AND  ENDS 


LECTURE  V 

MEANS  AND  ENDS 

Ye  have  heard  of  the  patience  of  Job,  and  have 
seen  the  end  of  the  Lord. — James  5:11. 

O  far  we  have  been  occupied  in  the  first 
place  with  the  attempt  to  find  the 
foundations  for  our  faith,  and  have 
seen  that  these  cannot  be  traced  down  to  meta- 
physical ultimates,  so  that  the  structure  of 
faith  must  be  built  from  the  cross-section  of 
experience.  In  regard  to  the  offer  of  author- 
ity made  by  the  Church  and  by  the  Bible,  we 
have  seen  that  these  also  can  only  be  authori- 
tative by  the  appeal  they  make  to  the  inner 
tribunal.  Passing  on  to  the  content  of  relig- 
ious knowledge  we  have  found  that  the  first 
essential  element  in  that  is  a  God  Whose  moral 
character  we  can  know  and  trust,  and  in  deal- 
ing with  Whom  we  may  and  must  apply  the 
ordinary  moral  standards  which  are  applied  in 
other  regions.  Finally,  we  have  found  that 
this  great  bond  of  moral  standard  gives  us 
such  a  unity  between  God  and  man  as  to  make 

149 


ISO        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

the  incarnation  with  its  developments  in  the 
crucifixion  and  resurrection  so  natural,  and 
indeed  inevitable,  that  we  find  in  Christ  the 
convincing  revelation  of  God  to  the  soul. 

Looking  back  over  the  field  of  recent,  and 
indeed  of  ancient  controversy,  we  find  that  a 
great  deal  of  the  disputing  has  seemed  to  pass 
by  the  questions  with  which  we  have  been  con- 
cerned in  these  lectures.  If  these  are  the  real 
fundamentals  of  faith,  then  much  of  religious 
controversy  has  been  little  better  than  beating 
the  air.  It  has  been  concerned  with  names  and 
words  which  refer  largely  to  metaphysical 
distinctions  so  recondite  and  far  off  from  liv- 
ing experience  that  it  is  questionable  whether 
any  one,  either  at  the  time  of  the  controversy 
or  before  or  since,  really  understood  what  he 
meant  by  them.  We  are  confronted  by  vast 
masses  of  traditional  detail  in  connection  with 
such  controversies,  which  have  been  held  by 
the  more  conservative  combatants  with  strenu- 
ous tenacity  against  the  inroad  of  scientific 
ideas.  If  it  should  appear  that  many  of  these 
controversies  are  entirely  irrelevant,  and  have 
very  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  essential 
Christianity  at  all,  we  may  hope  to  find  some 
appropriate  way  of  conceiving  the  situation 
and  dealing  with  it  in  a  reconciling  and  con- 
structive spirit. 


MEANS  AND  ENDS  151 

In  the  present  lecture  I  wish  to  throw  out 
some  hints  as  to  how  this  may  be  done.  In 
regard  to  detailed  controversies,  I  am  not 
espousing  either  one  side  or  the  other.  Most 
of  them  concern  matters  which  can  only  be 
rightly  decided  by  experts  in  comparatively 
narrow  fields  of  study,  and  the  opinion  of  one 
who  is  not  an  expert  in  these  details  must 
count  for  very  little.  But,  without  being  ex- 
perts in  the  details  of  science  and  criticism,  it 
is  possible  for  us  to  seek  and  find  a  just  view 
of  the  whole  situation,  and  a  calm  and  Chris- 
tian tolerance,  which  will  leave  each  man  to 
take  the  way  which,  on  the  whole,  appeals  to 
him  as  the  most  reasonable  and  best  authenti- 
cated. There  is  no  need  to  get  angry  and  to 
try  to  settle  such  controversy,  either  by  un- 
churching a  man  as  a  heretic  or  scorning  him 
as  a  fool,  although  his  way  of  thinking  may 
be  different  from  one's  own.  Until  the 
Church  has  learned  that,  and  put  it  into 
practice,  she  will  find  herself  very  seriously 
handicapped  in  her  attempt  to  impress 
the  mind  of  thinkers  who  are  outside  her 
pale. 

I  have  called  this  lecture  by  the  name  of 
Means  and  Ends.  In  order  to  make  this  title 
intelligible  I  would  refer  you  to  a  quotation 
from    Matthew    Arnold's    Culture    and    An- 


152        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

archy:  "  Faith  in  machinery  is,  I  said,  our  be- 
setting danger;  often  in  machinery  most  ab- 
surdly disproportioned  to  the  end  Which  this 
machinery,  if  it  is  to  do  any  good  at  all,  is  to 
serve;  but  always  in  machinery,  as  if  it  had  a 
value  in  and  for  itself.  What  is  freedom  but 
machinery?  What  is  population  but  ma- 
chinery ?  What  is  coal  but  machinery  ?  What 
is  wealth  but  machinery  ?  What  are,  even,  re- 
ligious organizations  but  machinery?  Now 
almost  every  voice  in  England  is  accustomed 
to  speak  of  these  things  as  if  they  were  pre- 
cious ends  in  themselves,  and  therefore  had 
some  of  the  characters  of  perfection  indis- 
putably joined  to  them.  I  have  before  now 
noticed  Mr.  Roebuck's  stock  argument  for 
proving  the  greatness  and  happiness  of  Eng- 
land as  she  is,  and  for  quite  stopping  the 
mouths  of  all  gainsayers.  Mr.  Roebuck  is 
never  weary  of  reiterating  this  argument  of 
his,  so  I  do  not  know  why  I  should  be  weary 
of  noticing  it.  '  May  not  every  man  in  Eng- 
land say  what  he  likes  ?  ' — Mr.  Roebuck  per- 
petually asks;  and  that,  he  thinks,  is  quite 
sufficient,  and  when  every  man  may  say  what 
he  likes,  our  aspirations  ought  to  be  satisfied. 
But  the  aspirations  of  culture,  which  is  the 
study  of  perfection,  are  not  satisfied,  unless 
what  men  say,  when  they  may  say  what  they 


MEANS  AND  ENDS  1 53 

like,  is  worth  saying, — has  good  in  it,  and 
more  good  than  bad.  In  the  same  way  the 
Times,  replying  to  some  foreign  strictures  on 
the  dress,  looks,  and  behaviour  of  the  English 
abroad,  urges  that  the  English  ideal  is  that 
every  one  should  be  free  to  do  and  to  look  just 
as  he  likes.  But  culture  indefatigably  tries, 
not  to  make  what  each  raw  person  may  like  the 
rule  by  which  he  fashions  himself;  but  to 
draw  ever  nearer  to  a  sense  of  what  is  indeed 
beautiful,  graceful,  and  becoming,  and  to  get 
the  raw  person  to  like  that." 

Readers  of  Arnold's  very  remarkable  book 
will  remember  the  amusing  and  unforgettable 
applications  which  the  author  makes  to  his 
main  principle  of  the  distinction  between 
means  and  ends.  He  divides  the  British  peo- 
ple into  three  classes — barbarians,  whose  main 
interests  are  field  sports;  Philistines,  who  con- 
cern themselves  with  such  machinery  as  that 
which  he  has  described  in  the  paragraph  al- 
ready quoted,  and  populace,  whose  ends  in 
life  are  mainly  shouting  and  beer.  He  points 
out  that  however  high  a  value  any  of  these 
classes  may  set  upon  those  things  for  which 
they  live,  yet  culture  continually  reminds  us 
that  these  at  their  best  can  only  be  means  to 
the  real  ends  of  living,  and  that  when  any  one 
mistakes  them  for  ends  he  has  made  a  vital 


154        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

and  very  serious  blunder.  It  is  a  principle  of 
the  widest  possible  application,  and  almost  all 
our  intellectual  and  religious  futilities  are  due 
to  our  ignoring  of  it.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
illuminating  and  comprehensive  applications 
which  have  yet  been  given  to  Christ's  own  lan- 
guage, What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  gain 
the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  sonl?  In 
this  lecture  we  propose  to  consider  it  in  two 
main  applications. 

1.  Origins  or  facts.  In  a  great  number  of 
the  controversies  that  have  raged  about  relig- 
ious questions  it  will  be  found  upon  examina- 
tion that  the  heart  of  the  dispute  concerns  the 
origins  of  the  religious  phenomena  rather  than 
the  religious  phenomena  themselves.  In  all 
these  lectures  we  have  been  dealing  with  re- 
ligion as  a  fact  of  experience,  and  in  the 
first  of  them  we  found  that  in  religion 
as  in  science,  it  is  absolutely  impossible  to 
go  beyond  experience  and  discover  the  ulti- 
mate metaphysical  foundations  of  faith.  In 
regard  to  authority  our  point  was  that  the  soul 
itself,  in  its  response  to  the  ideas  presented  to 
it  by  the  Church  and  the  Bible,  recognized 
there  facts  which  corresponded  with  its  own 
spiritual  life.  We  further  found  that  the  con- 
tent of  this  was  a  God  Who  acted  under  our 
familiar  moral  standards,  and  Who  revealed 


MEANS  AND   ENDS  155 

Himself  to  the  experience  of  man  as  the  in- 
carnate love  in  Jesus  Christ. 

All  this  gives  us  a  clear  and  consistent 
knowledge  so  far  as  our  own  experience  of  the 
Christian  ideas  goes;  but  behind  that  knowl- 
edge and  around  it  there  arise  many  questions 
as  to  how  these  ideas  began,  and  indeed  as  to 
how  man  himself  began.  This  intrusion  of 
the  question  of  origins  upon  the  living  experi- 
ence-knowledge of  the  soul,  is  the  biggest  red 
herring  in  the  world.  It  has  been  trailed 
across  the  path  of  religious  knowledge,  and 
has  led  vast  multitudes  off  the  scent  in  their 
pursuit  of  truth.  It  was  this  that  gave  to  the 
Pharisees  in  Christ's  time  their  characteristic 
error.  At  one  time  they  objected  to  Him  on 
the  ground  that  they  knew  whence  He  was. 
At  another  time  they  objected  to  Him  because 
they  knew  not  whence  He  was.1  But  in  both 
cases  they  were  too  much  interested  in  origins 
to  face  the  religious  truths  with  which  He 
would  have  confronted  them.  A  famous  re- 
ligious teacher  of  modern  times  has  said  in 
regard  to  the  earlier  presentations  of  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution:  "  I  care  not  whence  or  how 
I  came,  so  long  as  I  know  whither  I  am  go- 
ing." He  might  have  added:  "So  long  also 
as  I  know  that  I  have  actually  arrived,  and 
1  John   17:27;  John  9 :  29. 


156        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

that  truth  has  come  to  me  in  my  own  experi- 


ence." 


God  has  revealed  Himself  to  man  and  in 
man,  and  the  whole  concern  of  the  soul  lies  in 
its  response  to  that  revelation.  Theology  has 
too  often  concerned  itself  with  the  methods 
which  God  has  taken  for  revealing  Himself: 
but  the  real  stress  of  importance  lies  not  there, 
but  in  the  reality  and  effectiveness  of  the  reve- 
lation itself.  If  we  are  agreed  about  these, 
which  give  the  daily  course  of  life's  voyage 
and  its  sure  destination,  we  need  not  allow 
ourselves  to  be  set  quarrelling  over  detailed  en- 
tries in  the  log.  So  it  comes  to  pass  that  men 
who  have  a  genuine  religious  experience  have 
been  perpetually  engaged  in  unnecessary 
strife,  while  they  are  one  at  the  depths.  They 
have  magnified  these  questions  of  origin  and 
of  method  until  they  have  altogether  overes- 
timated their  value.  Below  all  such  diverse 
opinions  their  religious  experience  means  the 
same  thing. 

Every  one  who  is  interested  in  church  his- 
tory will  remember  endless  instances  in  which 
controversy  about  origins,  while  men  were 
agreed  about  facts,  has  wrought  havoc.  It 
explains,  for  instance,  much  of  the  bitterness 
that  has  entered  into  the  evolution  con- 
troversy.    There  is  a  tale  of  an  old  lady  in 


MEANS  AND  ENDS  157 

the  early  Darwinian  days,  who  was  informed 
in  the  crude  and  popular  language  of  those 
times  that  Mr.  Darwin  had  discovered  that  we 
were  all  descended  from  monkeys.  Her  reply 
was,  "  Oh,  let  us  hope  that  it  is  not  true,  but 
if  it  should  turn  out  to  be  true  let  us  by  all 
means  hush  it  up."  But,  unfortunately,  there 
is  no  use  in  trying  to  hush  up  such  theories, 
whether  they  be  true  or  not.  The  troublesome 
scientific  people  seem  to  have  no  reticence  at 
all,  and  they  have  very  greatly  vexed  the  mind 
of  Christendom  by  their  insistence  upon  such 
views  as  this.  Surely  it  is  evident  that  the 
worst  they  can  do  with  their  discussions  can 
never  reach  further  than  the  method  of  man's 
origin  upon  the  earth.  After  all  that  they 
have  to  tell  us  is  told,  they  neither  kindle  nor 
do  they  extinguish  any  light  whatever  upon 
the  power  that  is  behind  his  coming.  That 
power  may  work  regularly  and  slowly  as  they 
assert,  or  irregularly  and  suddenly  as  their  op- 
ponents hold.  But  the  whole  interest  and 
stress  still  lie,  not  on  these  methods,  but  upon 
the  power  behind  them.  The  living  will  of 
God  is  as  manifest  in  the  faithfulness  of  nat- 
ural law  as  it  is  in  any  fiat  of  creation,  and  the 
whole  difference  between  the  schools  does  not 
concern  God  at  all  but  is  only  a  question  of 
His  methods  of  operation.    It  is  a  question  of 


158        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

means  and  not  ends.  It  is  not  a  dispute  about 
what  God  hath  wrought,  but  about  how  He 
wrought  it.  The  thing  that  concerns  us  as 
men,  is  only  What  man  is  here  and  now,  and 
not  the  path  by  which  he  came  here  and  be- 
came what  he  is.  Whichever  theory  be  true, 
Carlyle's  words  concerning  Marie  Antoinette 
hold  equally  good,  "  For  if  thy  being  came  to 
thee  out  of  old  Hapsburg  dynasties,  came  it 
not  also,  like  my  own,  out  of  heaven?"  It 
would  seem  that  a  legitimate  and  reasonable 
course  to  take  is  to  content  oneself  with  the 
facts  of  religious  experience  as  we  find  them, 
and  to  leave  God  to  choose  His  own  method 
of  bringing  them  about. 

As  regards  that  method,  endless  other  con- 
troversies open  out.  We  are  told  that  man's 
belief  in  God  originated  long  ago  in  fear  of 
natural  catastrophe,  in  the  belief  of  ghosts, 
and  so  on.  We  have  already  stated  that  al- 
though these  and  such  like  crude  stimuli  may 
have  been  irritants  which  stirred  up  the  primi- 
tive spirit  of  man  to  seek  and  partly  to  find 
God,  yet  our  knowledge  of  God  once  estab- 
lished is  a  knowledge  of  fact  which  is  abso- 
lutely independent  of  the  stimuli  which  first 
of  all  suggested  it.  Again,  in  His  progress- 
ive revelation,  God  may  have  used  many 
methods  of  conveying  truth  to  the  growing 


MEANS  AND  ENDS  159 

mind  of  man.  He  may  have  used  either 
poetry  or  prose,  either  scientific  or  religious 
accounts  of  things,  either  history  or  gospel. 
Christ  Himself  chose  the  methods  of  parable 
and  poetry  for  the  communication  of  most  of 
His  truths,  and  that  which  He  considered  suf- 
ficient for  the  method  of  revelation  in  the  New 
Testament  is  surely  admissible  also  in  the  Old. 
Every  reader  will  see  how  far-reaching  the 
principle  of  means  and  ends  is,  when  one  ap- 
plies it  to  one  after  another  of  the  theological 
controversies  that  have  so  unnecessarily  rent 
the  Church.  God's  great  end,  so  far  as  we  are 
concerned,  is  the  revelation  of  Himself  to 
man.  Any  means  that  may  serve  that  end  is 
appropriate  and  legitimate.  Questions  of 
means  are  matters  for  argument,  in  which  the 
ordinary  evidence  by  which  we  decide  secular 
things  must  be  left  to  settle  disputed  points. 
But  our  religious  life  does  not  depend  upon  the 
answers  which  we  may  find  to  such  questions. 
Think  how  tragic  it  would  be  if  it  did  so  de- 
pend. 

"  I  have  a  life  in  Christ  to  live, 
But  ere  I  live  it  must  I  wait 
Till  learning  can  clear  answer  give 
Of  this  or  that  book's  date?  " 

Christianity    deals    both    with    questions    of 


160        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

origin  and  with  questions  of  fact.  With 
questions  of  origin  it  deals  historically  and  dis- 
passionately: with  questions  of  fact  it  deals 
vitally  and  passionately.  "  To  perceive  that 
things  are  what  they  are  and  not  what  they 
came  from — in  other  words  to  make  a  clear 
distinction  between  truth  and  genesis,  origin 
and  value — is  the  first  and  possibly  the  last 
lesson  which  the  student  of  religious  history 
ought  to  master." *  For,  most  assuredly, 
things  do  not  depend  upon  their  beginning: 
they  are  what  they  are. 

2.  A  second  and  even  more  important  ap- 
plication of  the  principle  of  distinguishing 
means  from  ends,  is  that  which  may  be  called 
by  the  general  designation  of  process  and 
event.  This  is  indeed  the  most  vital  of  all 
such  distinctions.  In  the  course  of  these  lec- 
tures we  have  been  dealing  both  with  processes 
and  events  in  religion.  In  the  lecture  upon 
the  Incarnate  Love  we  saw  how  the  supreme 
events  recorded  in  the  Bible  intercept  processes 
in  the  soul,  and  so  authenticated  themselves 
to  the  experience  of  man  as  fundamental 
truths.  Within  our  own  experience  we  find 
processes  which  we  cannot  understand.  We 
see  the  soul  blindly  groping  and  blundering  in 

1  Mackintosh,   Originality  of  the  Christian  Religion, 
P.  4. 


MEANS  AND  ENDS  l6l 

all  directions,  knowing  that  somehow  or  other 
it  must  go  questing  after  the  real  truth  of 
things,  yet  never  finding  light  enough  to  see 
clearly.  In  the  Gospel  record  we  find  stupen- 
dous events  which  take  up  into  themselves 
these  blundering  processes  of  the  soul.  The 
incarnation,  the  atonement  and  the  resurrec- 
tion come  to  man  as  he  is  feeling  his  way  about 
among  his  needs,  explain  these  needs  to  him, 
and  absolutely  meet  them  all.  They  confirm 
his  hope,  they  interpret  and  intensify  all  his 
best  desires,  and  they  send  the  whole  process 
of  life  on  its  way  confident,  intelligible,  sure 
of  the  future. 

Now  it  so  happens  that  according  to  the 
make  of  a  man's  mind,  or  the  education  to 
which  it  has  been  subjected,  will  be  his  pref- 
erence for  one  or  the  other  of  these  categories, 
process  or  event.  On  the  one  hand  there  are 
those  who  are  interested  only  in  the  process, 
and  to  whom  the  event  seems  unnecessary  and 
retarding.  Such  persons  are  indifferent  to 
history.  They  tell  us  that  it  would  matter 
nothing  to  them  whether  Christ  ever  lived  or 
not.  They  are  interested  only  in  the  workings 
of  their  own  minds  and  in  vague  religious  ex- 
periences which  often  are  rather  in  the  nature 
of  emotion  than  of  conviction.  Such  minds 
tend  to  lose  themselves  in  the  quagmire  of 


1 62        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

their  own  inner  life.  Their  soul  becomes  a 
sort  of  domesticated  sphynx,  which  is  con- 
tinually asking  questions  to  which  it  receives 
no  answer.  Much  of  whatever  results  they 
arrive  at,  is  borrowed  from  early  memories  of 
the  very  events  that  they  are  discarding;  and 
the  whole  of  their  religious  experience,  de- 
tached from  all  historic  conscience  and  inter- 
est, falls  into  confusion  and  leaves  their  re- 
ligion invertebrate  and  weak.  They  are  con- 
tent with  it  so  long  as  you  do  not  ask  them  to 
examine  it,  but  the  first  touch  of  inquiry 
leaves  them  at  the  mercy  of  every  passing 
mood. 

On  the  other  hand  there  is  a  type  of  mind 
which  occupies  itself  only  w7ith  events,  and 
knows  nothing  of  processes  in  its  religious 
life.  Such  factually-minded  persons  are  con- 
cerned only  with  historic  data  and  theological 
definitions.  Their  delight  is  in  labels,  pigeon- 
holes, and  such  other  methods  of  external  ex- 
actitude. As  to  the  being  of  God  they  will 
give  you  the  Athanasian  Creed,  but  they  will 
never  realize  that  God  has  revealed  Himself 
within  their  own  souls  as  Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Ghost.  With  regard  to  Christ  they  will 
be  satisfied  when  they  have  defined  Him  in 
some  such  formula  as  that  of  the  two  natures 
and    one    person,    forgetting   that    that    very 


MEANS   AND   ENDS  163 

formula  began  the  age-long  quarrel  as  to  what 
either  nature  or  person  meant  in  this  connec- 
tion. Such  inquirers  may  indeed  have  a  creed 
which  satisfies  the  cravings  of  their  own  in- 
tellectual curiosity,  but  they  will  never  know 
that  vital  sense  of  truth-seeking  and  finding 
which  is  the  daily  experience  of  those  who 
bring  all  events  into  the  light  of  spiritual  proc- 
esses, who  die  and  live  again  with  Christ,  and 
find  as  the  result  that  their  life  is  hid  with 
Christ  in  God.  The  factually-minded,  being 
wholly  dependent  upon  external  evidence,  will 
reach  but  a  hard  and  objective  external  the- 
ology, and  they  will  tend  to  drift  away  from 
actual  experience  altogether. 

Altogether  the  rivalry  is  an  unnecessary  and 
unprofitable  one,  and  the  opposition  between 
process  and  event  is  utterly  vain.  We  have 
need  of  both,  and  both  must  be  accepted  in 
order  to  attain  certainty  and  completeness  in 
faith.  The  Bible  tells  us  of  both,  and  allows 
to  each  its  fullest  scope.  In  regard  to  mir- 
acles, for  instance,  there  were  the  two  views 
confronting  each  other  in  the  time  of  Jesus. 
The  factually-minded,  whose  representatives 
were  the  Pharisees  of  His  day,  demanded 
signs  and  wonders  as  mere  objective  facts  and 
apart  from  any  spiritual  or  moral  significance 
that  they  might  have.     For  them  miracles 


164        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

were  of  no  use  unless  they  were  obvious  and 
confessed  breaches  of  natural  law.  There  was 
in  them  a  certain  anarchism,  an  objection  to 
law  just  because  it  is  law,  which  has  by  no 
means  wholly  departed  from  their  successors. 
Jesus  took  the  miracles  over  into  the  region 
of  process,  did  them  and  proclaimed  them  as 
the  quite  natural  operation  of  a  higher  law  of 
love.  He  refused  to  work  signs  and  wonders 
at  the  demand  of  those  who  were  interested 
merely  in  facts  and  not  in  meanings.  When 
we  read  about  the  miracles  of  Jesus  we  feel 
that  these  are  the  things  which  we  would  fain 
do,  and  in  a  very  slight  degree  can  approach 
towards  doing,  when  our  love  is  strong  enough 
and  our  heart  sufficiently  pure.  There  are 
those  among  men  who  can  indeed  work  won- 
ders even  upon  the  flesh  by  love.  But  suppose 
the  very  God  were  incarnate  in  a  man,  the 
eternal  love  walking  about  in  the  lazar-house 
of  the  world,  full  of  pity  and  affection,  how 
sure  and  inevitable  would  be  the  sort  of  mir- 
acle which  Jesus  did.  Miracles,  seen  as  mere 
external  facts,  are  but  such  shows  as  Phari- 
sees delight  in.  Miracles  which  carry  on  the 
processes  of  the  soul  further  than  men  can 
send  them,  are  indeed  convincing.  Jesus  re- 
fused at  the  Pharisees'  bidding  to  do  signs 
and  wonders,  but  at  the  bidding  of  the  needy 


MEANS  AND  ENDS  165 

round  about  Him  He  did  deeds  that  were 
congruous  with  His  love. 

In  regard  to  the  three  great  manifestations 
of  God  in  Christ,  which  as  events  are 
cardinal  matters  of  belief,  each  is  in  the  clear- 
est possible  way  represented  in  the  Bible  also 
in  the  category  of  process.  In  answer  to 
those  who  would  go  everywhere  searching  for 
the  living  word  of  God,  the  apostle  tells  them 
to  cease  searching  heaven  and  the  deep,  be- 
cause "  the  word  is  nigh  thee,  even  in  thy 
mouth  and  in  thy  heart."  The  atonement, 
than  which  no  event  could  be  more  definitely 
historical,  is  also  regarded  as  part  of  the  great 
scheme  of  life  in  such  passages  as  that  which 
speaks  of  the  Lamb  slain  from  the  foundation 
of  the  world.  As  to  the  resurrection,  upon 
which  as  an  event  so  much  stress  has  been  laid, 
and  around  which  so  much  controversy  has 
been  waged,  the  words  of  Jesus  are  very 
clear.  On  the  day  when  Lazarus  was  dead, 
Martha  said,  "  I  know  that  he  shall  rise  again 
in  the  resurrection  at  the  last  day,"  and  Jesus 
answered  her,  "  I  am  the  Resurrection  and 
the  Life."  These  taken  individually  are  suf- 
ficiently explicit,  but  there  is  a  well-known 
passage  in  St.  Paul,  whose  significance  in  this 
respect  has  been  rarely  realized,  where  he 
masses  the  whole  three  in  one  great  combina- 


1 66        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

tion  of  event  with  process:  "  That  I  may  know 
Him,  and  the  power  of  His  resurrection,  and 
the  fellowship  of  His  sufferings,  being  made 
conformable  unto  His  death;  if  by  any  means 
I  might  attain  unto  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead."  * 

In  this  chapter  we  have  sought  to  distin- 
guish means  from  ends  in  our  consideration  of 
the  data  of  our  Christian  faith.  In  the  first 
place  this  has  led  us  to  distinguish  origins 
from  present  facts.  The  whole  study  of  ori- 
gins, which  has  accounted  for  so  great  a  part 
of  theological  controversy,  is  only  at  the  best 
a  study  of  means.  After  you  have  settled  it 
in  whatever  way  appeals  to  you  as  true,  there 
still  remains  to  be  reckoned  with  all  that  which 
is  most  significant  and  vital.  The  thing  to  be 
accounted  for,  to  be  understood,  and  so  to  be 
treated  as  to  make  life  religiously  successful, 
is  the  present  fact  of  faith  in  its  widest  sense. 
The  things  that  we  most  certainly  believe,  the 
reason  that  we  have  for  believing  them  in  our 
own  religious  experience,  these  are  the  true 
ends  of  faith  in  every  instance.  It  is  indeed 
interesting  to  speculate  as  to  how  these  things 
were  achieved,  to  array  evidence  for  or  against 
the  various  theories  of  their  origin,  but  that  is 
entirely  a  subsidiary  business.     Thousands  of 

1  Philippians  3 :  10,  II. 


MEANS  AND   ENDS  167 

people  who  have  never  given  the  slightest  at- 
tention to  these  questions  have  yet  felt  the 
power  of  the  thing  itself.  Tens  of  thousands 
of  people  who  have  no  theory  whatsoever  con- 
cerning the  origins  of  any  religious  phenome- 
non, are  living  daily  by  the  faith  of  the  Son 
of  God,  and  conquering  life  in  the  virtue  of 
that  faith. 

We  passed  on  to  consider  the  same  distinc- 
tion of  means  and  ends  in  regard  to  process 
and  event.  The  end  of  religion  can  never  be 
a  set  of  events  which  happened  in  Palestine  or 
anywhere  else  at  a  certain  date  in  history. 
These  events,  well-authenticated  and  of  the 
most  critical  importance  although  they  are,  yet 
did  not  happen  for  their  own  sake,  but  for  the 
sake  of  their  effect  upon  the  lives  of  those  who 
believed  in  them.  The  most  important  thing 
about  them  is  their  religious  value  for  those 
who  take  them  over  into  the  process  of  their 
own  life.  In  other  words,  religion  is  for  life, 
and  not  life  for  religion.  The  end  of  religion 
is  not  that  man  should  think  exactly  accurate 
thoughts  about  a  multitude  of  events  which 
happened  in  human  history:  it  is  that  men 
should  have  within  them  the  saving  processes 
of  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul,  which  are  seen 
most  conspicuously  in  these  historical  events. 
Jesus  Christ  became  man  in  order  that  we 


1 68        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

through  Him  might  attain  to  manhood.  He 
died  upon  the  cross  that  we  might  be  made 
conformable  to  His  death.  He  rose  from  the 
dead  in  order  that  we  might  attain  to  His  res- 
urrection, not  merely  in  some  distant  future 
after  we  had  died,  but  here  and  now.  These 
were  the  means  Christ  took  to  accomplish  the 
great  ends  of  God  in  man.  These  ends  may 
be  summarized  in  two  sentences.  God's  great 
end,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  is  to  reveal 
Himself  to  man  and  to  save  him.  Man's 
chief  end  is,  in  the  great  words  of  the  Cate- 
chism, "  To  glorify  God  and  to  enjoy  Him 
forever." 

There  is  yet  another  application  of  the  dis- 
tinction between  means  and  ends  which  de- 
mands our  attention.  In  the  lecture  upon  The 
Character  of  God  it  was  argued  that  man's 
blunders  in  regard  to  the  moral  nature  of  God 
are  due  not  so  much  to  anthropomorphism  as 
to  the  experience  of  apparently  cruel  or  at 
least  regardless  treatment  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  life.  Providence  is  the  word  which 
man  uses  to  denote  this  perplexing  treatment 
of  his  life  by  God.  Apart  from  those  rare 
and  exceptional  instances  of  miracle  which 
have  broken  through  the  otherwise  uniform 
order  of  nature,  we  are  confronted  with  a  play 
of  natural  law  which  we  can  do  nothing  to 


MEANS  AND  ENDS  1 69 

change.  Our  acts  of  disobedience  to  it  or 
neglect  of  it  are  remorselessly  punished.  It 
knows  no  pity,  nor  does  it  make  allowance  for 
even  the  most  unavoidable  circumstances  that 
would  extenuate  the  blunders  that  bring  us 
into  conflict  with  it.  In  several  passages  we 
have  said  things  about  Providence  which,  al- 
though they  are  seldom  spoken,  are  yet  famil- 
iar sentiments  in  all  our  hearts.  Age  after 
age,  man  has  been  astonished  and  offended  by 
this  passionless  mask  of  uniform  law,  and  has 
cried  out  against  it,  or  silently  rebelled,  or  un- 
warrantably met  it  with  resignation.  The  ar- 
gument of  these  lectures  has  been  that  it  is  our 
duty  to  take  our  views  of  God,  not  from  this 
external  play  of  natural  law  which  we  call 
Providence,  but  from  the  revelations  made 
within  our  own  consciences  and  hearts  by  the 
great  voices  of  the  Bible  and  of  Jesus  Christ. 
These  tell  us  of  a  Father  Who  loves  us,  Who 
understands  and  pities  all  His  creatures,  Who 
shares  with  them  in  the  mystery  of  the  incar- 
nation and  the  atonement  all  the  horror  of  the 
human  tragedy,  and  Whose  love  is  mighty  to 
save  to  the  uttermost. 

Here  then  we  have  had  two  sources  of  in- 
formation to  which  men  have  gone  for  their 
knowledge  of  their  God.  How  are  we  to  re- 
late these  one  with  another  ?    And  how  are  we 


170        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

to  explain  their  strangely  diverse  messages? 
On  the  one  hand  there  are  apparently  two 
visions  of  God,  one  human  and  the  other  in- 
human. Providence  is  the  inhuman  one 
which  shows  a  world  under  law  whose  sweep 
is  practically  unbroken.  Our  Christian  faith 
insists  upon  a  human  vision  of  God  Who  may 
and  does  reveal  His  love  to  the  souls  of  His 
children  in  countless  ways.  It  is  a  very  bitter 
mystery  and  hopeless  contradiction  to  many 
men  and  women,  and  most  of  those  who  have 
tried  to  solve  it  have  given  up  all  hope  of  un- 
derstanding. Some  of  them  have  found  in  it 
a  reason  for  turning  away  from  faith  in  God 
altogether,  while  even  the  true  believers  have 
as  a  rule  confessed  themselves  utterly  baffled. 

It  is  vain  to  seek  for  a  perfect  understand- 
ing of  the  ways  of  God  in  Providence.  And 
yet  we  may  find  a  hint  which  will  not  only  illu- 
minate us  in  our  search  after  a  rational  theory, 
but  may  very  materially  assuage  and  comfort 
us  in  our  bitter  personal  sense  of  the  darkest 
elements  in  experience.  What  if  Providence 
be  a  matter  of  means,  while  love  is  the  ultimate 
end?  We  shall  never  begin  to  understand 
God  until  we  very  clearly  grasp  the  one  obvi- 
ous certainty  that  God  is  forever  working,  not 
for  the  moment,  but  for  the  long  result.  See- 
ing the  end  from  the  beginning,  His  purpose 


MEANS  AND  ENDS  171 

works  towards  that  far-off  goal,  and  does  not 
swerve  from  its  course.  If  we  understood  all, 
it  would  be  plain  to  us  that  this  is  not  only  the 
better,  but  the  only  possible  way,  in  which  a 
universe  can  be  managed.  Even  for  our  own 
sakes,  one  can  see  how  absolutely  necessary  it 
is  that  there  should  be  an  order  upon  which 
man  may  count,  and  by  which  he  may  guide 
his  course  through  life.  Were  our  human 
history  managed  upon  the  principle  of  per- 
petually recurring  interferences  for  the  sake  of 
this  or  that  one  of  the  countless  myriads  of 
men,  it  would  be  impossible  for  any  one  to  ac- 
commodate himself  to  so  unstable  and  irregu- 
lar a  world.  Thus  the  means  which  God  takes 
to  carry  on  the  story  of  human  life  upon  the 
earth  are  not  such  as  to  satisfy  the  heart  of 
man;  and  if  we  mistake  these  means  for  the 
ultimate  end  of  God's  purpose,  and,  as  the 
phrase  is,  "  judge  God  by  Providence,"  we 
shall  find  ourselves  in  hopeless  error. 

The  ends  of  God,  His  ultimate  purposes,  are 
never  disclosed  by  Providence  at  all.  Provi- 
dence is  but  the  machinery  which  works  these 
out  from  age  to  age.  We  have  to  accommo- 
date ourselves  to  it  as  best  we  may,  and  seek 
by  all  means  in  our  power  to  understand  the 
uniform  play  of  nature,  and  to  utilize  its  dan- 
gerous forces  scientifically.     But  the  essence 


172        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

of  all  religion  is  a  belief — well-founded  in 
spiritual  experience — that  man  is  not  only  in 
contact  with  these  means  of  God's  purposes, 
but  that  a  nearer  relation  may  be  established 
between  each  individual  soul  and  the  final  ends 
of  God's  treatment  of  His  creatures.  We 
may  commune  with  Him,  spirit  with  spirit; 
and,  through  the  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ 
playing  upon  our  own  inner  experience,  we 
may  reach  the  conviction  that  love  is  the  true 
end  and  ultimate  purpose  even  of  the  laws  of 
nature.  We  may  pass  them  by  and  leave  them 
as  the  mysterious  means  which  God  has  seen 
best  to  employ  for  the  process  of  His  whole 
creation,  and  with  a  leap  of  the  spirit  reach 
God  directly  in  understanding  and  in  love. 
This  is  the  conclusion  at  which  the  writer  of 
the  famous  hymn  arrived  in  his  couplet: 

"  Behind  a  frowning  providence 
He  hides  a  smiling  face." 

It  is  the  most  courageous  and  also  the  wisest 
of  all  the  acts  of  faith. 

Mr.  Chesterton  has  expressed  this  in  a  pas- 
sage concerning  nature,  which  is  familiar  to 
many  of  his  readers,  and  I  may  be  permitted 
to  quote  a  few  words  in  regard  to  this  expres- 
sion of  his  from  an  essay  in  another  book: 
"  Thus  it  comes  to  pass  that  in  the  midst  of  a 


MEANS  AND  ENDS  1 73 

time  resounding  with  pagan  voices  old  and 
new,  he  (Mr.  Chesterton)  stands  for  an  un- 
flinching idealism.  It  is  the  mark  of  pagans 
that  they  are  children  of  Nature,  boasting  that 
Nature  is  their  mother:  they  are  solemnized 
by  that  still  and  unresponsive  maternity,  or 
driven  into  rebellion  by  discovering  that  the 
so-called  mother  is  but  a  harsh  stepmother 
after  all.  Mr.  Chesterton  loves  nature,  be- 
cause Christianity  has  revealed  to  him  that  she 
is  but  his  sister,  child  of  the  same  Father. 
'  We  can  be  proud  of  her  beauty,  since  we  have 
the  same  father ;  but  she  has  no  authority  over 
us ;  we  have  to  admire,  but  not  to  imitate/  " 

This  is,  I  think,  so  far  as  any  one  can  go  in 
speaking  of  the  inscrutable  mystery  of  life. 
Every  man  and  woman  will  at  times  be 
brought  up  against  circumstances  in  their  own 
experience  which  will  make  it  extremely  diffi- 
cult for  them  to  retain  their  confidence  in  the 
good-will  of  God.  At  such  times  few  people 
will  be  able  to  argue  matters  out  in  cold  blood 
and  persuade  themselves  into  peace.  Yet 
there  seems  to  be  no  other  way  than  this  dis- 
tinction between  the  ends  which  God  is  deter- 
mined to  achieve,  and  the  means  which  He  in 
His  infinite  wisdom  sees  to  be  the  best  or  the 
only  ways  for  achieving  them.  Although  at 
the  moment  it  may  be  impossible  for  the  sore 


174        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

heart  to  grasp  this  and  find  in  it  any  consola- 
tion, yet  afterwards,  in  most  cases,  life  will 
bring  a  larger  understanding  and  a  humbler 
patience.  In  any  case,  it  seems  that  in  the  last 
analysis  we  shall  find  our  highest  wisdom  in 
distinguishing  God's  great  and  tenderly  loving 
ends,  from  the  unintelligible  means  by  which 
He  works  them  out.  If  we  could  accustom 
ourselves  to  this  distinction,  it  would  be  a  very 
great  aid  to  faith  as  well  as  to  courage.  The 
way  of  the  Lord  is  often  in  great  waters. 
Blessed  is  he  that  hath  seen  the  end  of  the 
Lord. 

"Against  all  dark  thoughts  engendered  by 
our  experience  of  Providence,  faith  sets  its 
one  assurance  of  a  Love  that  is  certain  as  life 
itself.  He  who  wholly  believes  in  and  trusts 
that  Love,  may  leave  the  mysterious  silence 
and  the  apparent  indifference  to  wait  their  ex- 
planation when  Love  shall  find  language  in 
God's  good  time." 


LECTURE  VI 

WHERE  THE  FAITHS 
OF  MEN  MEET 


LECTURE  VI 

WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN  MEET 

There  are,  it  may  be,  so  many  kinds  of  voices 
in  the  world,  and  none  of  them  is  without  signifi- 
cation.— i  Cor.  14: 10. 

WE  have  come  in  our  final  lecture  to 
consider  the  bearing  of  all  this 
upon  the  relation  of  Christianity 
with  other  faiths.  Two  extreme  positions 
have  been  taken  here.  On  the  one  hand  every 
heathen  thing  has  been  condemned  as  being  in- 
spired by  devils  and  wholly  evil.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  has  been  a  tendency  to  con- 
sider all  religions  practically  equal  in  value, 
their  differences  being  only  the  casual  and  un- 
important peculiarities  imparted  to  each  by 
local  colour — differences  not  in  any  way  essen- 
tial, nor  even  seriously  important.  If,  as  we 
have  contended  in  these  lectures,  the  founda- 
tions of  man's  faith  are  to  be  found  in  his  own 
religious  experience,  it  might  seem  not  unnatu- 
ral to  accept,  as  a  consequence  of  that  fact,  the 
position  that  the  best  thing  for  the  world 
would  be  a  continuance  of  that  faith  which  has 
naturally  grown  up  in  each  part  of  it,  under 

i77 


178        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

whatever  fuller  light  may  be  thrown  upon  it 
by  a  wider  culture.  This  is  very  far  from 
being  our  view,  although  we  believe  that  God 
has  not  left  any  of  His  creatures  without  some 
true  revelation  of  Himself,  and  therefore  that 
it  is  impossible  to  look  scornfully  upon  any 
interpretation  of  their  inner  life  which  men 
have  found,  even  though  it  be  apart  from 
Christ's  interpretation. 

Let  us  take  in  the  first  place  the  instance  of 
modern  Oriental  cults.  There  is  an  abundant 
supply  of  literature  concerning  Buddhism  and 
the  other  religions  of  the  East,  and  any  one 
who  will  visit  the  best  shrines  where  Bud- 
dhism and  Shintoism  are  now  practiced  will 
certainly  be  filled  with  wonder  at  the  nobility 
of  the  precepts,  and  the  air  of  reverence  and 
beauty,  that  have  gathered  round  the  holy 
places.  Visit  the  temples  in  Nikko,  where  the 
curtain  waves  alluringly  in  front  of  that  secret 
place  wherein  the  eye  catches  only  a  glimpse 
of  mother  of  pearl,  and  you  will  see  a  gather- 
ing of  ancient  and  modern  exquisiteness  which 
will  dazzle  and  delight  you.  The  sunshine, 
broken  by  lattices  which  melt  it  into  the  most 
exquisite  patterns,  comes  reflected  from  dark 
cryptomerias  and  the  yellowish  green  of  other 
trees,  until  it  would  seem  as  if  the  whole 
temple  had  been  washed  in  molten  emeralds. 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN  MEET     1 79 

Everything  that  can  add  to  beauty  and  touch 
it  with  the  romance  of  very  ancient  life  goes 
to  aid  the  effect  upon  the  senses  and  the  spirit. 
There  is  a  magic  there  that  seems  to  have 
power  to  draw  out  all  that  is  wistful  in  the  soul 
of  the  worshipper,  like  the  similar  wistfulness 
that  fell  upon  the  spirit  of  him  who  long  ago 
watched  the  waving  of  the  veil  in  the  temple  of 
Jerusalem  and  could  not  take  his  eyes  off  it 
for  his  longing  to  see  what  was  within.1  It  is 
a  land  of  dainty  reticences,  and  religion  has 
had  much  to  do  with  these.  If  the  temple  be 
one  of  Shinto  worship,  the  eye  is  directed  upon 
the  mirror  of  the  oratory.  When  you  ask  the 
guardian  he  will  tell  you  that  God  Himself 
cannot  be  seen,  but  dwells  in  the  holy  of 
holies:  yet  the  Spirit  of  God  is  in  the  mirror, 
and  in  contemplating  our  own  lives  we  may 
find  Him.  "  When  you  worship,  God  is  here." 
"  If  we  seek  Him  we  become  one  with  Him." 
In  such  circumstances  it  is  impossible  not  to 
remember  once  more  the  oracle  of  Delphi,  and 
the  most  famous  saying  of  Socrates,  Know 
thyself.  Is  not  this  but  another  way  of  stat- 
ing the  fundamental  truth  which  we  have 
sought  to  express  in  all  these  lectures,  viz., 

1  See  the  Record  of  Pseudo-Aristseus,  professing  to 
be  the  report  of  an  embassy  from  Alexandria  in  con- 
nection with  the  foundation  of  the  great  library. 


180        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

that  the  ultimate  basis  of  authority,  and  source 
of  religious  knowledge,  is  within  the  soul  of 
man?  Visit,  on  the  other  hand,  a  Buddhist 
temple,  and  as  you  pass  through  the  great  gate 
you  may  read  these  words  in  English: 

"  NOTICE  :  KOTOKU-IN  MONASTERY,  KAMAKURA 

Stranger,  whoever  thou  art,  and  whatever 
thy  creed,  when  thou  enterest  this  sanctuary 
remember  that  thou  treadest  upon  ground 
hallowed  by  the  worship  of  ages.  This  is 
the  temple  of  Buddha  and  the  gate  of  the 
Eternal,  and  should  therefore  be  entered 
with  reverence. 

By  Order  of  the  Prior." 

Take  even  the  temples  of  Kwannon,  that  an- 
cient Chinese  god  or  goddess  whose  enormous 
wooden  statues,  in  some  cases  carved  in  one 
piece  from  the  stem  of  an  ancient  tree,  repre- 
sent the  taking  over  into  Buddhism  of  various 
Chinese  idolatries.  Round  the  main  statue 
you  will  find  others  standing  in  the  dim  light, 
and  beside  one  of  these,  in  a  shrine  which  is  at 
least  five  hundred  years  old,  there  is  this  in- 
scription:— "Jizo,  a  coming  Buddha,  yielded 
up  His  right  to  the  eternal  peace  that  He 
might  save  the  souls  of  men,  and  renounced 
Nirvana  to  suffer  with  humanity  for  other 
myriad  million  ages."     Now  this  statue  is  not, 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN  MEET     l8l 

as  one  might  think,  a  relic  of  some  ancient 
missionary  enterprise  of  Christianity.  It  is 
an  integral  part  of  certain  developments  of 
Buddhist  teaching,  and  no  one  can  fail  to  see 
how  near  it  comes  to  the  essential  idea  of  self- 
sacrifice  which  Christians  express  in  the  atone- 
ment. 

These  instances  raise  the  very  interesting 
question  how  far  it  may  be  possible  to  incor- 
porate a  pagan  faith  in  the  statement  of  the 
Christianity  wThich  is  to  supersede  it.  That 
there  are  elements  common  to  the  two,  it  is 
impossible  to  deny;  but  how  far  it  is  safe  to 
utilize  such  elements  by  any  sort  of  a  blend 
between  the  former  paganism  and  the  new 
Christianity,  is  a  different  question.  The 
opinion  among  missionaries  themselves  is  di- 
vided. On  the  one  hand,  such  instances  as 
those  which  we  have  quoted  appeal  very 
strongly  to  the  imagination  of  some,  who 
would  fain  reinterpret  the  beautiful  truths  un- 
derlying paganism,  and  even  incorporate  some 
of  its  practice  or  ritual.  This  has  been  the 
policy  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in 
heathen  countries  all  along:  and  we  cannot 
forget  how  great  was  the  influence  of  the 
Eleusinian  mysteries  upon  the  earliest  forms 
of  the  Christian  sacraments.1 

1  See  Hatch's  Hibbert  Lecture. 


182        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  those  who,  in 
the  spirit  of  the  early  Christians  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  consider  all  paganism  a  mere  devil- 
worship,  and  who  go  about  among  the  antiqui- 
ties and  beauties  of  the  East  with  the  avowed 
purpose  of  smashing  Buddha.  Sober  opinion 
among  missionaries  seems  to  linger  between 
the  two  extremes.  On  the  one  hand  they  are 
not  blind  to  the  fact  that  there  is  much  which 
is  precious,  and  which  is  ready  for  the  use  of 
Christ,  in  the  practices  and  thoughts  of  other 
religions.  On  the  other  hand,  they  point  to 
the  fact  that  the  populace  is  entirely  ignorant 
of  spiritual  meanings  in  its  own  worship.  To 
the  average  man,  who  worships  at  a  temple  in 
any  of  the  Eastern  cults,  his  religion  consists 
entirely  in  the  performance  of  a  certain  ritual 
into  whose  meaning  he  never  dreams  of  in- 
quiring. It  seems  reasonable  to  plead  that  it 
is  hardly  worth  while  for  the  Christian  mis- 
sionary to  double  his  labours,  by  first  instruct- 
ing such  persons  in  the  meaning  of  their  own 
Buddhism  or  Shintoism,  and  then  afterwards 
proceeding  to  relate  these  teachings  to  Christi- 
anity. 

While  this  and  other  such  considerations 
should  hold  us  back  from  any  cheap  and  igno- 
rant praise  of  the  heathen  cults,  as  being  equal 
or  superior  to  Christianity,  it  should  certainly 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN   MEET     1 83 

suggest  the  desirability  of  all  possible  appre- 
ciation when  dealing  with  an  ancient  faith. 
Let  us  remember  what  heathenism  essentially 
is.  For  us,  with  our  long  Western  tradition 
of  Christian  faith,  it  is,  of  course,  a  pitiable 
thing,  very  far  inferior  to  even  such  attempts 
at  Christianity  as  have  been  achieved  in  Chris- 
tian lands.  Yet  something  is  to  be  said  for 
idolatry  if  we  would  fairly  judge  those  who 
have  practiced  it.  Apart  from  the  unlearned 
crowd  to  whom  it  is  a  mere  unintelligible 
ritual,  there  are  in  every  land  great  numbers 
of  people  to  whom  it  really  means  the  worship 
of  ideas.  Many  of  these  ideas  are  indeed 
ideals.  As  has  been  already  stated,  man  does 
not  tend  as  a  rule  to  worship  that  which  his 
conscience  and  his  intellect  despise,  but  to  con- 
struct ideals  better  than  the  powers  discover- 
able in  ordinary  life,  and  to  worship  these. 
Thus  idolatry  may  be  essentially  a  kind  of  as- 
piration, and  there  is  no  doubt  that  in  the 
minds  of  the  better  class  of  worshippers  it  has 
this  quality.  Brodie  Innes  expresses  this  very 
strongly:  "I  have  never  in  one  instance/'  he 
says,  "  found  a  man,  woman,  or  child,  who  be- 
lieved what  the  Comparative  Religionists  say 
he  ought  to  believe  .  .  .  who  thought 
that  the  physical  sun  in  the  sky  was  a  god 
.     .     .     but  in  every  case  the  god  was  the 


1 84       THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

power  behind.  No  man  ever  yet  worshipped 
an  idol  or  a  fetish-stone,  but  many  have  be- 
lieved that  some  spiritual  power  entered  into 
the  material  form,  changing  its  nature,  and  as 
it  were  working  through  it.  It  is  difficult  to 
draw  any  very  definite  line  between  this  belief 
and  the  Christian  sacramental  idea." " 

Idolatry  may  be  either  a  retrogression  or  an 
advance.  In  the  case  of  religions  which  have 
laid  great  stress  upon  ritual  as  a  means  of 
presenting  and  realizing  spiritual  power,  there 
will  be  a  tendency,  as  there  certainly  has  been 
in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  for  the  igno- 
rant and  vulgar  to  relapse  from  all  spiritual 
conceptions  and  to  regard  the  material  ele- 
ments of  the  ritual  in  a  purely  fetish  manner. 
This  has  undoubtedly  been  the  case  in  regard 
to  Buddhism  and  to  many  other  Oriental  re- 
ligions. In  all  such  cases  idolatry  is,  of  course, 
a  retrogression.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  if 
one  contrasts  an  intelligent  paganism  with  the 
mere  brutality  of  very  primitive  races,  it  will 
be  seen  that  paganism  marks  the  dawn  of 
ideals  higher  than  those  of  the  earth  and  of 
the  flesh,  and  must  be  regarded  as  in  every 
way,  both  intellectually  and  spiritually,  an  ad- 
vance. 

The  greatest  danger  of  the  East  to-day  is 

1  Old  As  The  World,  p.  112,  Brodie  Innes. 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN  MEET     1 85 

not  idolatry  but  godless  civilization.  There 
was  a  third  play  of  Prometheus,  besides  the 
two  which  we  possess,  in  which  even  iEschylus 
turned  against  Prometheus,  and  the  very  sea- 
nymphs  whom  he  had  succoured  denounced 
his  doctrine.  In  that  conclusion  of  the  whole 
matter  ^Eschylus  proclaimed  that  "  the  con- 
fessed evils  of  civilization  are  witness  on  Zeus' 
side  against  Prometheus."  Take  the  case  of 
certain  ancient  Eastern  lands  to-day,  and  think 
of  the  extremer  forms  in  which  their  impact 
with  the  West  has  expressed  itself.  The  new 
life  rising  there  has  in  certain  quarters  openly 
summed  itself  up  in  the  three  demands  for  no 
government,  no  marriage,  and  no  God.  Can 
any  one  question  the  greater  safety,  not  to 
speak  of  sanity  and  beauty,  of  the  older 
faith? 

But  it  is  obvious  that  the  God  Who  is  to 
supplant  the  gods  of  yesterday  in  those  coun- 
tries which  are  to-day  in  their  intellectual  and 
spiritual  birth-throes,  must  be  a  great  God  and 
not  a  small  one.  Something  has  been  already 
said  concerning  this  in  the  lecture  upon  The 
Character  of  God;  but  here  it  becomes  appar- 
ent with  a  new  force  of  conviction,  that  the 
God  of  to-morrow  in  all  such  lands  must  be 
divine  upon  the  largest  scale.  If  it  be  true 
that  the  curse  of  heathendom  has  been  local 


1 86       THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

gods,  it  is  incumbent  upon  those  who  would 
proclaim  the  God  of  Christianity  to  heathen 
lands  to  see  to  it  that  theirs  is  in  no  sense  a 
local  divinity.  He  must  be  largely  conceived, 
interested  not  merely  in  individual  conver- 
sions, but  in  all  the  secular  life  and  well-being 
of  mankind,  great  enough  to  cope  with  the 
international  ideals  of  our  time,  and  with  the 
conception  of  progress  which  civilization  in- 
troduces. 

In  this  connection  it  is  a  matter  of  the  great- 
est possible  interest  that  at  the  present  moment 
we  are  witnessing  a  revival,  not  only  of  Christi- 
anity, but  of  all  religions,  after  the  depressing 
period  of  the  war.  Brahmanism,  for  instance, 
is  proclaiming  that  there  are  Indian  people 
who  feel  it  to  be  a  better  approach  to  the  Di- 
vine, and  a  better  fulfillment  of  the  ends  of  life, 
for  men  "  humbly  to  sit  upon  a  prayer-rug  and 
not  always  to  be  rushing  about  in  motor-cars." 
There  is  a  still  more  curious  but  very  active 
attempt  on  the  part  of  Buddhists  in  Japan  and 
elsewhere  to  imitate  certain  of  the  methods  of 
Christianity.  Buddhist  schools  are  being 
founded  to  rival  the  Christian  Sunday-schools, 
and  Christian  hymns  are  being  adapted  to 
Buddhist  worship,  so  that  you  may  hear  within 
a  temple  in  Japan  to-day  the  strains  of 
"  Buddha,  lover  of  my  soul."     The  effect  pro- 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN  MEET     1 87 

duced  upon  the  mind  by  all  this,  is  that  of  a 
tendency,  and  indeed  a  systematic  endeavour, 
to  blend  Christianity  with  other  faiths,  and  to 
find  in  the  composite  worship  something  which 
will  retain  the  best  elements  in  each,  and  cease 
to  be  in  any  sense  exclusive. 

As  we  glance  back  through  past  periods  of 
history,  we  can  see  at  times  the  fanatical  zeal 
with  which  the  Christian  religion  repudiated 
all  other  kinds  of  worship.  The  furious 
antagonism  of  the  crusades  leads  us  back  to 
the  fixed  conviction  of  the  early  Christians 
that  all  pagan  deities  were  devils.  And  that 
again  reminds  us  of  the  days  of  Ahab,  king  of 
Israel,  who  sought  in  his  own  way  to  blend  the 
worship  of  Israel  with  the  Baal  worship  of 
Phoenicia,  and  aroused  the  violence  of  Elijah, 
who  would  be  satisfied  with  nothing  less  than 
the  slaughter  of  the  priests  of  Baal  beside  their 
altar.  The  present-day  scientific  spirit,  and 
the  higher  developments  of  education  gen- 
erally, have  inclined  many  cultured  people  to- 
wards a  blending  of  the  various  worships  of 
the  world  in  one  inclusive,  though  ill-defined 
and  somewhat  nebulous  faith.  Yet  this  is  by 
no  means  the  first  of  such  attempts  at  synthe- 
sis. Indeed,  there  is  an  undated  frog-charm 
that  has  been  found  somewhere  in  the  East, 


1 88        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

which  shows  within  the  crescent  of  the  ancient 
moon-goddess  the  inscription  Jesus  and  Maria. 

Thus  we  are  led  back  to  the  third  and  fourth 
centuries  of  the  Christian  era,  when  syncre- 
tism reached  its  fullest  and  most  wide-spread 
development.  The  Roman  Empire  was  show- 
ing signs  of  decay,  and  was  indeed  already 
hastening  to  its  end.  With  it  the  largest 
promises,  dreams,  and  hopes  were  perishing, 
and  leaving  men  in  a  deepening  sadness  of 
spirit  as  they  beheld,  each  in  his  own  country, 
the  dying  agonies  of  the  gods.  Everything  at 
that  time  was  in  an  evening  twilight.  In  some 
cases,  like  those  of  Palmyra  and  Jerash,  they 
seem  to  have  conserved  only  the  merest  exter- 
nals as  relics  of  a  former  faith  now  discarded. 
Men  were  busy  making  money  and  building  up 
upon  the  earth  the  best  establishments  they 
could,  although  they  knew  that  they  could  en- 
joy them  but  for  a  little  time.  In  every  land 
it  was  the  same.  Rationality  was  enlisted  on 
the  side  of  earth,  and  any  idealism  of  what- 
ever kind  was  relegated  more  and  more  to  the 
sphere  of  poetic  imagination.  Yet  there  was 
that  in  the  minds  of  all  men  which  refused  to 
part  utterly  from  the  dream  that  had  been  so 
wonderful.  A  great  wistfulness  characterized 
these  centuries.     Evander  and  his  wife,  typ- 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN   MEET     189 

ical  of  countless  thousands  of  others,  go  to  the 
oracle  of  Dodona  to  present  this  question,  By 
what  prayer  or  worship  they  may  fare  best 
now  and  forever  ?  The  craving  for  immortal- 
ity reaches  its  climax,  and  everywhere  men 
grudge  the  departure  of  that  glamour  and 
mystic  fascination  which  cling  about  the  an- 
cient pagan  world. 

Meanwhile  the  Roman  soldier  marches 
through  all  the  earth.  He  knows  his  Roman 
gods  and  finds  parallels  to  them,  sometimes 
fanciful  but  sometimes  wonderfully  exact,  in 
every  land  into  which  he  is  led.  Everybody 
knows  that  in  the  Great  War  there  was  a  re- 
vival of  prayer  in  the  trenches,  and  it  was  the 
same  in  these  ancient  days.  Face  to  face  with 
immediate  danger,  men  cry  to  whatsoever 
powers  there  may  chance  to  be;  even  to  very 
vague  and  legendary  powers,  upon  the  chance 
that  there  may  be  some  realities  corresponding 
to  them.  They  see  their  neighbours  employing 
different  rituals  and  invoking  gods  by  different 
names,  but  they  recognize  that  the  meaning  of 
the  cry  is  the  same,  and  that  the  meaning  of 
the  god  seems  to  be  the  same  also.  It  was 
this  that  kept  paganism  such  "  an  unconscion- 
able time  in  dying,"  and  it  was  such  influences 
as  these  that  unified  it  in  the  minds  of  men. 
Not  only  were  the  emotions  of  pagan  worship 


190        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

obviously  deep  and  sincere;  sometimes  they 
contrasted  favourably  with  those  of  current 
Christianity.  In  one  of  his  letters  the  late  Dr. 
Denny  has  said:  "  Pagan  Rome  impressed  me 
much  more  than  Christian — at  least  much 
more  favourably.  The  pagans  were  not  saints 
but  they  were  not  habitually  engaged  in  doing 
infamous  things  in  holy  names,  and  it  gives 
them  an  honesty  and  dignity  even  in  their  bad- 
ness to  which  most  of  the  popes  can  make  no 
pretense."  All  this  throws  strong  light  upon 
the  syncretism  of  the  time,  and  interprets  the 
great  court  and  vestibule  at  Baalbec,  where 
men  in  the  third  century  had  collected  a  pan- 
theon of  no  fewer  than  three  hundred  and 
thirty  gods.  On  the  one  hand  the  idea  seems 
to  have  been  that  there  must  be  truth  some- 
where, and  that  although  men  were  increas- 
ingly sceptical  about  the  worth  and  efficacy  of 
this  and  that  divinity,  yet  by  massing  their 
gods  in  sufficient  quantities  they  must  almost 
certainly  find  some  live  potency  of  help.  But 
besides  this  mitrailleuse  theory  of  worship, 
whose  principle  was  that  if  one  barrel  missed 
there  were  plenty  of  barrels  left  that  might 
hit,  there  was  another  and  a  deeper  fact  about 
the  court  and  vestibule  of  Baalbec  and  all  it 
stood  for.     This  is  expressed  in  very  remark- 

1  Letters,  p.  154. 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN  MEET     191 

able  words  by  that  same  Pseudo-Aristaeus 
whom  we  have  already  mentioned :  "  For  the 
God  who  sees  and  created  all  things  whom 
they  worship  is  He  whom  all  men  worship; 
and  we  too,  oh  king,  though  we  address  Him 
by  other  names  as  Zeus  and  Dis,  and  by  these 
names  they  of  old  time  not  inappropriately 
signified  that  He,  through  whom  all  things  re- 
ceive their  life  and  being,  is  the  director  and 
Lord  of  all." 

Every  reader  must  have  been  reminded  by 
some  of  these  later  statements,  of  the  speech 
of  Paul  to  the  Greeks  in  Athens  recorded  in 
the  seventeenth  chapter  of  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles.  In  that  speech  we  see  a  Christian 
version  of  the  endeavour  to  find  a  common 
element  in  all  man's  attempted  worship.  God 
Whom  all  men  everywhere  are  ignorantly  and 
blindly  seeking,  shut  His  eyes  to  the  mistakes 
of  ignorance,  for  He  had  made  all  nations  to 
dwell  in  all  the  face  of  the  earth  that  they 
should  seek  Him,  if  haply  they  might  feel 
after  Him  and  find  Him.  He  went  on  to 
quote  the  pagan  poet  Aratus,  who  sang  that 
we  are  also  his  offspring,  and  he  rebuked  men 
for  imagining  that  He,  in  Whom  we  all  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being,  was  to  be  found 
locally  in  images  of  gold  or  silver.  The  sig- 
nificance of  that  speech  for  our  present  pur- 


192        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

poses  cannot  be  exaggerated.  And  it  goes  on 
to  lead  us  directly  back  to  Christ  that  we  may 
find  its  confirmation  in  Him.  Now  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  while  Jesus  said  nothing  directly 
along  the  lines  of  Paul's  speech  on  Mars*  Hill, 
yet,  on  the  other  hand,  He  spoke  no  word  of 
bitterness  about  pagan  worship.  His  only 
references  to  the  heathen  are  one  or  two  casual 
words  which  have  no  significance  for  our  pres- 
ent purpose,  such  as  those  parables  of  the  last 
judgment,  in  which  the  nations  are  judged 
upon  common  grounds  of  humanity  which 
they  share  alike  with  Christians  and  with 
Jews.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  these  words 
were  spoken  at  a  time  when  all  the  Jewish 
world  was  agitated  about  the  golden  eagles 
imported  into  Jerusalem,  and  when  the  wor- 
ship of  the  Emperor  of  Rome  and  his  gods 
was  a  point  of  current  interest  and  keen  anxi- 
ety. 

The  childhood  of  Jesus  was  spent  in  the 
highland  village  of  Nazareth.  When  He  was 
old  enough  to  stray  beyond  the  daily  walk, 
hand  in  hand  with  His  mother,  to  the  village 
well,  His  first  excursions  must  have  been  to  a 
little  hill  whose  summit  is  but  ten  minutes  dis- 
tant from  the  well.  Looking  north  from  that 
hilltop  He  saw  the  great  road  that  led  from 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN  MEET     1 93 

the  sea  to  the  furthest  East  by  way  of  Safed, 
far-flung  like  a  gigantic  rifle-sling  along  the 
mountainsides.  Back  and  forward  along  that 
road  there  passed  every  day  long  strings  of 
camels.  Those  eastward-bound  carried  from 
the  Phoenician  seaports  much  merchandise 
gathered  from  all  the  shores  of  the  Mediterra- 
nean, to  be  sold  in  the  markets  of  lands  across 
the  desert.  The  west-bound  caravans  that 
crossed  them,  swung  beneath  heavy  bales  of 
silks  and  rare  aromatic  spices,  and  all  manner 
of  precious  products  from  Persia  and  even 
India,  to  the  Phoenician  ships  that  swung  at 
their  anchors  in  Tyre  and  Sidon.  Far 
thoughts  must  have  followed  them  in  both  di- 
rections, as  the  child  learned  His  first  lessons 
about  the  breadth  of  the  world  of  His  day. 
Turning  southward  upon  His  hilltop,  in  the 
twilight  of  a  frosty  evening,  He  would  see 
there,  far  below  Him,  the  wine-red  fringes  of 
the  great  plain  of  Esdraelon,  on  which  from 
immemorable  generations  the  battles  of  the 
world  had  been  fought,  so  that  the  colour  of 
the  plain  must  necessarily  suggest  a  land  soaked 
in  ancient  blood.  Through  the  clear  air  a 
sound  would  reach  Him  of  the  clang  of  iron 
upon  stone,  as  the  sentries  of  Roman  cohorts 
changed  guard,  or  the  armoured  bands  started 
upon  the  last  stretch  of  their  march  to  the  gar- 


194        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

rison  at  Capernaum.  Nazareth  in  those  days 
was  to  some  extent  what  it  still  is,  a  crucible 
town  in  which  many  nations  fused  and 
blended;  and  the  twofold  vision  of  the  hill- 
top must  have  supplied  material  for  much 
thinking  through  His  childhood  and  youth. 

There  came  at  last  a  day  when,  with  all  the 
kaleidoscope  of  life  turning  itself  in  His  young 
mind,  He  felt  that  the  time  had  come  for  gath- 
ering the  varied  knowledge  into  clear  decision 
and  a  definite  course.  There  had  appeared 
upon  the  Jordan  the  figure  of  John  the  Baptist, 
who  seemed  to  be  a  prophet  born  for  leading 
men  to  great  decisions,  and  for  separating  the 
chaff  from  the  wheat,  not  only  among  men  but 
among  the  ideas  of  his  time.  Jesus,  with 
countless  crowds  of  Galileans,  visited  the  Jor- 
dan, and  came  back  from  His  interview  with 
John  with  the  memory  of  divine  acknowledg- 
ment which  must  be  the  master-thought  of  all 
His  remaining  years.  But  first  He  must 
choose  His  course,  and  the  story  of  the  three 
temptations  seems  to  indicate  a  clear  presenta- 
tion to  His  mind  of  three  alternative  careers, 
among  which  He  might  select  the  one  which 
would  give  Him  scope  for  His  divinely  ap- 
pointed mission.  There  was  the  career  of 
commerce  and  of  industry  already  graphically 
presented  to  His  imagination  by  the  caravans 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN  MEET     195 

on  the  Safed  road — the  world's  way  of  trans- 
forming the  precious  stones  of  every  land  into 
bread  for  the  merchant  and  the  workman. 
There  was  the  possibility  of  imperialism  and 
military  power  and  dominance.  The  vision 
of  Rome  with  its  emperor  and  its  armies  was 
one  which  must  necessarily  impress  every  act- 
ive and  virile  mind  of  those  times;  and  with 
His  powers  it  would  have  been  easy  enough 
for  Him  to  dominate  the  world  by  military 
force,  and  create  an  empire  such  as  even  Rome 
had  never  dreamed  of.  Or,  if  He  felt  an  in- 
congruity in  such  ambitions,  if  they  jarred 
upon  His  sensitive  religious  spirit,  there  was 
the  career  of  the  religious  teacher  who  by 
some  astounding  wonder  might  at  a  leap  set 
Himself  upon  the  throne  of  human  faith. 
Such  were  the  careers  that  were  obvious  and 
entirely  practicable,  and  He  rejected  each  of 
them  in  turn.  It  was  not  that  in  any  of  them 
there  was  that  which  He  condemned  as  in- 
trinsically wicked.  It  was  enough  for  Him  to 
know  that  they  were  not  careers  for  Him,  and 
that  the  line  of  the  Father's  purpose  led  Him 
into  another  road. 

The  road  into  which  it  did  lead  Him  was, 
in  comparison  with  those  other  careers,  the 
simplest  in  all  the  world.  He  went  back  to 
Galilee,   spoke  now  and  again  in  the   syna- 


196        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

gogues,  accepted  invitations  to  feasts,  asso- 
ciated with  fishermen  and  peasants,  and  sent 
forth  His  messages  quite  casually  as  the  occa- 
sion suggested.  No  life  was  ever  simpler  or 
more  characteristically  human  than  the  life  of 
those  years  in  Galilee.  They  are,  essentially, 
the  days  of  the  Son  of  Man.  Hither  and 
thither  He  wandered,  by  the  seaside  or  upon 
the  mountains,  with  the  sun  and  the  rain  in 
His  face,  and  the  winds  of  God  blowing  upon 
Him.  He  noted  the  ploughman  at  the  plough. 
He  saw  the  life  of  peasants  in  their  humble 
dwellings.  For  Him  the  lilies  clothed  them- 
selves in  more  than  regal  splendour.  To  Him 
the  birds  of  the  air  sang  continually.  On  a 
visit  to  Jerusalem  he  was  interviewed  by  night 
by  Nicodemus,  a  wise  old  man,  fettered  and 
fossilized  by  much  learning  in  the  schools  of 
the  rabbis.  His  introductory  words  are  laden 
with  all  the  politeness,  formality,  and  stupidity 
of  a  typical  man  of  the  schools.  To  all  this 
ponderous  artificiality  Jesus  answers  with  a 
word,  reminding  him  that  he  had  never  listened 
to  the  wind. 

The  Beatitudes,  rightly  understood,  show 
perhaps  as  strikingly  as  anything  the  bright 
and  sunny  spirit  of  those  early  days.  Blessed 
are  the  poor.  Blessed  are  the  hungry.  Blessed 
are  they  that  mourn — it  has  been  supposed  to 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN   MEET     197 

proclaim  a  melancholy  kind  of  blessedness. 
But  then  people  who  thus  interpret  it  have  for- 
gotten the  word  that  always  follows,  and  which 
gives  its  meaning  to  every  text — for.  The 
hungry  are  not  blessed  because  they  are  hun-  \f 
gry,  but  because  they  shall  be  filled.  The 
mourning  are  not  blessed  because  they  mourn 
but  because  they  shall  be  comforted.  The 
poor  are  not  blessed  because  they  are  poor,  but 
because  they  are  heirs  of  a  kingdom.  And 
this  exhilaration  of  the  Beatitudes  is  char- 
acteristic of  the  whole  spirit  of  the  teaching. 
The  wild  joy  of  living  is  in  it  everywhere,  the 
exuberance  of  a  heart  at  leisure  from  the 
business  of  the  world  and  eagerly  rejoicing. 
Above  all,  love  is  in  it,  a  wonderfully  gra- 
cious and  generous  appreciation  of  man, 
woman,  and  child  around  Him,  which  finds  its 
well-springs  in  a  higher  love,  the  love  of  the 
Father  in  heaven.  With  His  Father  He  is  in 
constant  communion,  and  in  that  communion 
there  is  perfect  satisfaction  and  rest.  All  the 
world  is  beautiful  to  Him,  and  all  men  and 
women  are  Hi's  brothers  and  sisters.  He  has 
the  freedom  of  land  and  sea  and  air,  loving 
them  and  the  creatures  that  pass  along  their 
ways,  as  one  who  is  everywhere  at  home.  For 
certain  days  this  brilliant  ministry  endured, 
falling  like  a  splash  of  sunshine  upon  the  gray 


198        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

life  of  many  a  Galilean  peasant,  and  astonish- 
ing His  followers  with  its  amazing  natural- 
ness and  sweet  gladness.  It  was  the  first  phase 
of  His  ministry. 

But  there  fell  upon  this  glad  path  the 
shadow  of  the  cross.  Just  as  upon  the  garden 
of  Joseph  of  Arimathea  the  shadow  of  the 
cross  fell  upon  its  appointed  day,  and  swept 
round  that  garden,  touching  alike  its  flowers, 
its  luxuriant  pathways,  and  its  new-cut  tomb; 
so  upon  all  thoughts  of  life  and  death,  and 
upon  everything  that  grew  in  the  whole  garden 
of  the  world,  fell  the  shadow  of  the  cross  of 
Calvary  upon  the  way  of  Jesus.  Gradually  it 
darkened  on  Him,  and  we  see  His  references 
to  it  becoming  more  and  more  frequent  as  He 
proceeded.  Incomprehensible  to  His  follow- 
ers, but  unmistakably  certain  to  Himself,  it 
deepened  steadily  until  it  created  for  Him  the 
second  phase  of  His  life  and  teaching.  Then 
it  brought  with  it  the  sense  of  pain  in  the  heart 
of  life,  the  sure  and  inevitable  cross  in  the 
center  of  every  banner  that  man  may  carry, 
either  into  festival  or  into  battle.  Joy  that  has 
no  pain  in  the  heart  of  it  is  but  the  laughter  of 
fools.  Success  that  wants  that  dark  element 
of  sorrow  and  defeat  is  but  an  elusive  dream. 
Love  that  is  all  selfishness  and  has  no  sacri- 
fice is  the  sorest  delusion  of  all,  and  turns  in- 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN   MEET     199 

evitably  into  loneliness  or  hatred.  In  a  word 
the  finished  product  of  life  is  composite,  and 
for  the  fusing  of  it  there  is  necessary  the  bitter 
amalgam  of  pain.  It  claimed  Him  with  a 
mysterious  clutch.  Sin  was  in  that  shadow  as 
well  as  pain.  To  Him  sinners  were  neither 
outcasts  nor  aliens  as  they  were  to  the  Phari- 
sees. Their  grim  business  concerned  Him  in- 
timately and  He  made  it  His  own,  until  at  the 
last  the  dark  element  of  suffering  sprang  at 
the  throat  of  life  itself,  bearing  with  it  the  sin 
of  all  the  world  in  the  final  death-grip  of  the 
cross  of  Calvary,  whereon  dying  He  mastered 
sin  and  death  forever.  This  was  the  second 
phase  of  His  ministry. 

Let  us  turn  our  minds  now  to  the  world  of 
Jesus'  time  and  man's  search  for  God  in  it. 
While  it  was  various  in  detail,  yet  it  grouped 
itself  into  two  main  types  which  compre- 
hended every  phase  of  it.  On  the  one  hand 
there  was  the  Greek  spirit  and  all  that  it  rep- 
resented in  the  world.  To  the  Greek,  God 
was  practically  the  view.  He  lived  in  a  land 
of  hills  deep  in  green  acanthus.  The  gods 
loved  the  sunlight  in  which  their  worshippers 
built  their  houses,  and  the  sunlight  loved  the 
sea,  so  that  the  poet  could  sing  of  the  "  Num- 
berless laughter  of  the  waves."    Nay,  the  sun 


200        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

was  God  to  multitudes,  and  the  worship  of 
Apollo  dominates  alike  the  bright  thinking  and 
the  happy  emotions  of  the  age  of  Pericles.  In 
every  wind  among  the  reeds  there  was  the 
sweet  music  of  the  pipes  of  Pan — that  allur- 
ing and  wonderful  music  that  always  whis- 
pered so  much  more  than  it  told,  and  drew  out 
the  hearts  of  men  and  women  beyond  the 
dusty  and  prosaic  earth  into  a  wonderland  of 
half-expressed  desire  and  wistfulness.  Har- 
mony too  was  there,  and  balance,  and  ration- 
ality of  thought, — a  world  not  only  exquisite 
but  well-ordered,  a  world  of  essential  sanity, 
and  endless  possibilities  of  delight. 

Yet  upon  this  lovely  paradise  of  a  world 
there  fell  strange  shadows.  The  Greek  knew 
nothing  of  the  cross,  and  would  have  con- 
sidered it  foolishness  if  he  had  known.  But 
all  that  the  cross  stood  for,  the  sorrow  and  the 
darkness  of  mankind,  fell  upon  his  world  also. 
The  pipes  of  Pan,  with  all  their  exquisite  sug- 
gestiveness,  could  yet  play  cruel  music;  and 
nature  seemed  to  claim  man  for  her  victim 
when  man  daringly  aspired  to  be  her  compan- 
ion. And  when  this  shadow  fell  upon  the 
Greek  he  had  no  refuge  anywhere  in  which  to 
hide  from  it.  He  knew  the  truth  that  there 
is  in  beauty,  the  essential  rightness  of  love  and 
sunshine,  yet  these  were  not  the  portion  of 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN  MEET    201 

any  man  beyond  certain  days  and  limits.  So 
he  longed  for  an  immortality  beyond  the  grasp 
of  his  faith,  and  sought  with  blind  fingers,  like 
a  groping  child,  for  the  bosom  of  God  whereon 
to  lay  his  weary  head  and  find  love  made  per- 
fect. But  nature  has  no  breasts  of  tenderness, 
and  the  groping  man  sooner  or  later  was 
clasped  by  the  lean  fingers  of  death.  Thus  the 
world  of  the  Greek  was  hopelessly  unintelligi- 
ble. 

Such  was  the  religion  of  the  West.  Con- 
trasted with  it,  manifest  in  many  forms,  was 
another  religion,  which  found  sorrow  and  fail- 
ure to  be  the  most  impressive  facts  of  life. 
Pain  and  death,  and  all  their  train  of  disap- 
pointing experience,  were  accepted  by  the  East 
and  pressed  to  its  bleeding  heart.  What  else 
was  there  to  do?  The  Greek,  even  after  his 
disillusions,  persistently  refused  to  turn  his 
eyes  from  beholding  vanity.  The  Oriental 
proclaimed  that  all  is  vanity,  even  in  his  wine 
cups.  Egypt,  with  its  august  and  ancient  re- 
ligion of  the  dead,  the  whole  Middle  East  with 
its  perpetual  sacrifices  offered  to  bloody  gods 
whom  men  tried  to  appease  and  yet  never 
finally  succeeded  in  appeasing,  these  were  the 
immediate  environment  of  Palestine.  And  in 
the  still  further  East,  connected  with  Mediter- 
ranean lands  by  many  streams  of  commerce 


202        THE   FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

and  of  travel,  was  that  great  and  already  long- 
established  faith  whose  fundamental  dogma 
was  the  illusion  of  experience  and  the  evil  of 
desire,  whose  hope  and  aim  was  the  death  of 
these  in  Nirvana. 

Compare  these  two  phases  of  faith  with  the 
two  periods  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  and  a  close 
correspondence  will  at  once  appear.  He  took 
them  both  up  into  His  hands,  confirmed  the  es- 
sential truth  of  each,  and  flung  away  the  error 
which  bound  man  to  despair.  We  have  al- 
ready said  that  Christianity  is  not  a  new  faith 
rivalling  the  old.  It  is  the  faith,  interpreting 
all  the  others  and  correcting  them.  Christ 
stands  not  for  a  religion  but  for  religion,  the 
finding  of  God  and  eternal  life  by  men.  There 
were  no  wholesome  elements  in  the  best 
thought  of  Greece  which  are  not  to  be  found  in 
the  Galilean  Gospel  of  Jesus;  while  the  dark 
tragedy  that  oppressed  the  eastern  lands  from 
Egypt  to  the  Ganges  and  beyond  it,  found  its 
match  and  its  remedy  in  the  Cross  of  Calvary. 
In  the  Galilean  Gospel,  the  love  of  the  Father 
and  the  promise  of  eternal  life  heartened  men 
and  fortified  them  for  the  bitterest  disappoint- 
ments that  beset  their  appreciation  of  the 
world,  and  told  them  that  the  bright  gospel  of 
the  sunshine  and  the  wind  would  outlive  the 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN   MEET     203 

catastrophe  that  threatened  it  in  death  and  dis- 
illusion. To  the  Eastern  He  proclaimed  that, 
dark  though  the  tragedy  of  life  might  be,  yet 
the  Cross  was  mighty  to  turn  it  into  salvation. 
He  faced  the  bitterness  of  sorrow,  death,  and 
sin  in  His  cross,  as  Buddha  never  did  in  his 
law  of  renunciation.  Yet  He  believed,  and 
taught  men  to  believe,  not  in  death  as  the  ulti- 
mate word,  but  in  life — a  life  that  at  last 
would  be  free  from  all  precariousness,  and 
would  stand  eternally  secure  from  the  attack 
of  evil.  Thus  did  Jesus  make  for  the  Greek 
the  passing  dream  into  a  reality,  and  the  pass- 
ing beauty  into  an  eternal  splendour.  Thus 
for  the  Oriental  He  faced  sin  and  sorrow,  but 
refused  to  admit  their  tyranny.  Taking  upon 
Himself  that  load  in  all  its  crushing  sorrow, 
He  redeemed  man  from  his  bondage  and  gave 
him  immortal  freedom.  Thus  did  He  com- 
bine within  Himself  all  that  any  man  had  ever 
sought  and  found  of  God. 

Here  then  is  the  true  syncretism,  which  ac- 
knowledges and  takes  up  into  itself  every 
worthy  element  in  man's  thought  of  God,  and 
yet  refuses  to  allow  men  to  rest  in  faiths  that 
had  imperfectly  expressed  these.  For  this  was 
Jesus  Christ,  complete  and  perfect  man,  Who 
had  gone  through  the  full  circle  of  human  ex- 


204        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

perience,  from  the  laughter  of  the  child  to  the 
cry  of  the  broken  heart.  He  is  man's  brother, 
standing  beside  him  in  every  phase  of  human 
life,  undergoing  and  understanding  it.  He 
descended  into  hell,  the  hell  of  man's  guilty 
conscience  and  despair,  and  having  sounded 
the  depths  of  sorrow  which  had  haunted  men 
with  their  evil  dreams,  He  brought  back  from 
the  ultimate  abyss  the  great  human  heritage  of 
an  eternal  hope.  Complete  and  perfect  man, 
and  yet  surely  how  much  more!  He  was  not 
as  we  are,  East  and  West  alike,  the  victim  of 
life:  He  was  its  Master  and  its  Lord.  He 
brought  all  the  power  and  wisdom  and  love  of 
eternity,  and  set  them  free  in  full  play  upon 
the  creatures  and  events  of  time.  Surely  this 
is  very  God  come  in  the  flesh,  claiming  all 
man's  joy  and  sorrow  as  divine,  directing  men 
to  find  them  in  the  life  of  God  where  alone 
they  can  dwell  safely,  revealing  everything  in 
the  light  of  the  eternal  love  as  the  only  inter- 
pretation of  any  phase  of  human  life. 

There  is  abundant  evidence  that  this  was  the 
effect  of  Christ  upon  the  early  Christians. 
Apart  from  the  countless  records  of  their  faith 
and  its  tests  both  in  living  and  in  dying,  we 
have  a  rejuvenated  world  rising  from  the 
ashes  of  the  spent  and  outworn  history  of 
Greece  and  Rome.     Pater  in  his  Marius  the 


WHERE  THE  FAITHS  OF  MEN   MEET     205 

Epicurean  has  given  us  in  a  few  sentences  such 
a  picture  of  that  world  as  will  send  its  message 
down  through  many  generations.  "  What  de- 
sire, what  fulfillment  of  desire,  had  wrought 
so  pathetically  on  these  ranks  of  aged  men  and 
women  of  humble  condition?  Those  young 
men,  bent  now  so  discreetly  on  the  details  of 
their  sacred  service  had  faced  life  and  were 
glad.  .  .  .  Some  credible  message  from 
beyond  the  flaming  rampart  of  the  world — a 
message  of  hope  regarding  the  place  of  men's 
souls  and  their  interest  in  the  sum  of  things." 

This  then  is  the  sum  of  the  whole  matter. 
The  foundations  of  our  Christian  faith  are 
laid,  not  in  metaphysical  abstractions,  but  in  the 
deep,  permanent,  and  essential  facts  of  human 
nature,  seen  and  interpreted  in  the  light  of 
Christ.  That  interpretation  is  not  only  con- 
vincing, it  is  inevitable.  It  takes  up  and  ful- 
fills not  only  the  desire  of  man's  heart  but 
every  fact  of  his  human  experience,  which 
never  finds  itself  until  it  finds  itself  in  Him. 
He  is  indeed  for  us  the  image  of  the  invisible. 
God  Almighty  is  just  like  Christ,  and  there  is 
nothing  more  to  learn  concerning  God  beyond 
Him.  Christ  comes  to  us,  to  take  up  alike  the 
joy  and  sorrow  of  our  daily  lives,  their  love 
and  pain,  and  to  reveal  them  all  as  parts  of 


206        THE  FOUNDATIONS  OF  FAITH 

that  life  which  is  the  life  indeed.  In  Him  we 
find  God  mighty  to  master  sin  and  set  us  free 
from  its  dominion,  strong  to  save  to  the  utter- 
most because  He  loves  to  the  uttermost.  In 
Him  we  find  the  eternal  God  meeting  us  in  all 
the  ordinary  byways  of  our  journey  through 
the  days  and  years,  and  leading  us  at  last  to 
our  places  in  the  eternal  life  and  love. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


Date  Due 

<i> 

